


Something Like Summertime

by Imagination_Parade



Category: A Star is Born (2018)
Genre: Drinking, Early in Canon, F/M, Falling In Love, Fame, Flirting, Hotels, Interviews, Kissing, Making Love, Musicians, Romance, Sex, Stolen Moments, Summer Love, Tour Bus, Touring
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2020-03-09 12:30:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18917035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imagination_Parade/pseuds/Imagination_Parade
Summary: "Good. We're on the same page. You'll come and sing with me."a series of one-shots focusing on moments during Jackson's tour and the early days of Jack & Ally's relationship





	1. Afterparty

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be a collection of one-shot stories about the tour we see Jackson & Ally on towards the beginning of the movie - everything you find here will be set between the beginning of the show in Arizona and the end of the tour. The chapters will be in a fairly chronological order (no jumping all over the place or anything like that), but each one will have a self-contained story, and they'll probably vary in length & rating a little bit. Basically, I kept coming up with early Jack & Ally ideas and decided to finally make something of them, so I hope you guys enjoy it, too :)
> 
> Story title taken from Bon Jovi's "Summer Time"

The concert goers had long left behind the Arizona amphitheater, but the afterparty for the show’s performers raged on inside Jackson Maine’s tour bus. Parked in the darkness back behind the stage with a bevy of other buses that carted his tour and the people who made it happen across the country, the singer himself stood by the counter, off to the side of the festivities, nursing a beer in his hands and keeping an entertained eye on the new woman in his life as loud music filled the small space.

Ally stood right in the middle of it all, the still-half-full beer in her own hands all but forgotten as she laughed and freed her body to the music. Jack and his band usually partied after a performance, on a bus or in someone’s hotel room; after a thousand live shows, it was more of a routine than a celebration, a way to soften the crushing blow of silence and lost adrenaline once the lights went down and the crowd stopped applauding, but everything was brand new for Ally, and she seemed _electrified_. Watching her, Jack wasn’t sure she was ever, as she said in the lyrics of the song that had brought her to his tour bus, going to meet the ground.

A smile teased the edges of his lips as he turned around to exchange his empty beer bottle for something stronger. The gin in the glass he poured for himself had barely touched his lips when movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Ally hopped over and wrapped her arms around his middle from behind as the alcohol slid down his throat.

“Hey,” he said, touching the arm wrapped just above his stomach.

“So how does this work?” she asked, her chin pressing into his shoulder. “Do you have to, like, stay at the party until people start to leave on their own, or…”

She trailed off, leaving her thought hanging between them. Jack turned his neck just enough to catch a glimpse of her. “I can leave,” he said. “You uncomfortable?”

“No, I’m fine,” she said.

“But you _want_ to leave?” he asked.

“I was just thinking we could maybe go back to the room.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Come sleep with me,” she said resolutely.

Jack’s eyebrow raised at the unexpectedly forthright request, and he turned his head to look at her again. “You mean sleep like sleep, or…” Ally shot him an impish grin but said nothing, making her intentions clear. He turned around and wrapped one of his arms around her shoulders as hers tightened around his middle again. “Pretty fucking bold,” he said with a chuckle.

Ally’s face instantly changed upon his words as if all of her momentarily forgotten insecurities had rushed back in one fell swoop. “Too bold?” she asked immediately.

“Fuck no,” Jack said just as quickly. He leaned down and gave her a quick, reassuring kiss on her mouth before polishing off his drink. “Let’s get out of here.”

 

The hotel they’d checked into earlier was only just across the street, so Ally didn’t have to wait for Jack to call them a ride after they quietly slipped away from the party. They scurried across the empty street hand-in-hand, Jack leading the way, and walked into the hotel lobby with their arms around each other. It was late enough that nobody else was around, save for the night shift person behind the front desk, so when the elevator doors closed, they wasted no time in coming together for a heated kiss.

She wasn’t typically the type of girl to get things started in an elevator, but butterflies fluttered across her stomach on the ride up to their floor as Jack grabbed her ass and sucked on her bottom lip. She had thought she’d only get one night with him, just one night after he made her dreams come true, if only for one song, and then he came back for her and handed her both for a whole summer. They separated when the doors slid open, their hands finding each other’s again as their eyes shared a wicked gleam, but when he stopped suddenly as they turned the corner away from the elevator, Ally shot him an apprehensive look. She’d meant to watch how much he’d been drinking, partially out of curiosity towards whether the prior show had been his normal, and partially because she knew, if it was, taking care of him would fall on her now, but in the midst of the single most exhilarating night of her life, she’d failed to be as attentive as she’d hoped.

“You okay?” she asked with a nervous chuckle.

“Yeah,” he muttered. He glanced around at the doors surrounding them and asked, “Just…shit, which one is it?”

He’d been distracted when they got there, the drama with his brother getting the better of him, and Ally simply pointed towards the door to their room. She slipped out of his embrace as she pulled the hotel key out of her own pants pocket this time, and he followed behind her. When they reached their destination, Ally opened the door and turned to look at him from the doorway.

“Are you gonna pass out on me again?” she asked, her voice hardened as if she were already bracing herself for disappointment.

Jack sweetly smiled at her and said, “No, I’m not.”

“I just want to know if I’m getting my hopes up,” she said.

When she continued to shoot him a look that said she didn’t quite believe him, he took one step forward and grabbed her waist, lifting her until her face was level was his, and kicked the door shut behind them. Her back hit the door as it clicked into place, her legs fell naturally around his waist, and Jack kissed her, hard, his tongue wasting no time seeking hers. He pressed his body against hers, trapping her between his chest and the door so one of the hands holding her up could slide around to her front. His hips bucked slightly, and Ally moaned as her legs unconsciously grasped onto him a little tighter. Jack’s hand tugged her blouse from the waistband of her pants and slid up against her bare stomach as his lips found the base of her neck. He kissed a journey back up to her jawline, his hand moving over the top of her bra, and Ally’s mouth fell open as she turned her head against the door. He had barely touched her yet, and she was already on her way to ecstasy.

“I’ve gotta make it up to you,” he muttered. “You deserved better the other night.” He tilted his head and caught her attention, encouraging her to look back towards him, and he kissed her again.

Ally let out a heavy breath as they parted and curled both hands around his face, her fingers gripping the hair around his ears. “Our first time was perfect,” she whispered, and she meant it. It’d been sleepy and sexy – a slow, passionate burn leading to intimate crescendos – and while she had gone to bed that night ticked at him for leaving her to bask in the glory of their stage performance all alone, and while it was hardly the night she’d expected to have with him after their fiery first kiss, she knew she wouldn’t change anything about the morning they had shared together.

Jack’s hands curled around her ass as he pulled her away from the door and carried her to the bed. A small squeak escaped her throat when he adjusted her in his arms, and she leaned into him, throwing her arms around his neck so he could navigate the dark, unfamiliar room without further distraction. When he reached the bed, he leaned over, and she let go, gingerly falling onto her back on the mattress. Jack pulled off both of their shoes and turned the lamp beside one side of the bed onto the dimmed setting before joining her.

“Just so you know,” he said, crawling over her. Her legs came up to encircle his waist again as she reached for him. “If your dad hadn’t been right downstairs this morning, I probably would’ve started this as soon as you agreed to come here with me.”

Ally grinned again and deftly began unbuttoning his shirt. “If my dad hadn’t been right downstairs,” she promised. “I would’ve beaten you to it.”

 

A curse fell from Jack’s lips as he collapsed on Ally’s chest, both partners breathing heavily as they began recovering from the high they’d just shared. Ally’s hands remained tangled in his hair, her sated sigh turning into a short whine when he left her. He felt her legs relax slightly around his body, and Jack gathered enough strength to press his hands into the mattress on either side of her torso and push himself back up.  

“Sorry,” he mumbled, trying to alleviate some of his weight on her.

“Not yet,” she whispered, tightening her limbs around him again.

“What?” he asked.

Ally caressed his bare back with one hand while the other teased the hair at the base of his neck. “Don’t roll over yet,” she requested, looking into his eyes.

“But I’m crushing you,” Jack said, glancing down at their bodies.

“I like it,” Ally whispered with a smile.

Jack chuckled as she blissfully slipped her eyes shut again. The amount of times they’d had sex was still fewer than the amount of fingers on one of his hands, but the one thing he already knew for sure was that the tiny woman beneath him loved _being_ beneath him. She shivered slightly as the air around them began to feel cool against their heated skin, and, not wanting to deny her anything, he delicately lay some of his weight back down onto her body and rested his forehead against hers. A low, euphoric chuckle escaped her lips, and while that should’ve been enough of a clue that she was still feeling a little feisty, Jack still found himself surprised when she gently captured his earlobe between her teeth and ran her hand up his chest, her palm rubbing against his nipple. Her legs were still wrapped around him, knees hooked around each of his sides, and Jack could feel the heat radiating from her core.

“Shit,” he laughed, caressing the outside of one of her thighs. “Are you gonna be like this after every show?”

Ally let his ear fall from her teeth as she laughed, too. “I don’t know; that was my first one!”

He grinned at her for another moment before he cupped a hand around her face and leaned down to meet her lips. Jack kissed her slowly, and her hand stroked his back again, sending a shiver down his own spine. When he felt her begin to calm, he left her lips and began leisurely kissing down her body. The first kiss on her collarbone led to a trail of kisses down the center of her chest, over her stomach, around her hip, between her legs. He lingered there for a moment, tugging her thighs to rest against his shoulders as he settled in, his hands finding a resting place on her hips, and she abruptly reached down to grab his hair. Not sure whether that was a sign to keep going or a sign to stop, he pulled back.

“Do you like what I’m doing here?” he asked softly.

“Yeah,” she purred, matching his tone.

“You’re not too sensitive or something?” he checked.

“As long as you keep doing it that soft, I’m okay,” she promised.

Ally quietly moaned as he leaned back in, her hands leaving his hair in favor of threading her fingers through his. He kept his unspoken promise, keeping the pressure against her gentle, but even still, it only took a minute or two of his mouth on her before she started trembling again.

She let go of his hands and covered her eyes as she settled. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said in a hushed, astonished tone.

Jack crawled back up her body and hovered over her. “What?” he asked. He touched her nose to get her to look at him, and Ally’s hands fell against her own shoulders as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with them anymore.

“This. Anything. _Fucking_ all of it,” she said breathlessly. “The shows. Shallow. You. I just…I can’t…I…I need a fucking drink.”

Jack laughed heartily. “Well, I can fucking get you one of those,” he said as he finally rolled off of her.

He ducked into the bathroom, quickly cleaning himself up and grabbing another towel to take back to Ally. When he returned, he found her rolled onto her stomach, stretched horizontally across the mattress. She had finally pulled her hair out of the ponytail she wore on stage, and while her hand massaged her own head, Jack’s eyes followed her dark hair over her shoulders and scanned down her body. She hadn’t bothered to pull the sheet over herself, and his gaze got stuck on the part of her lower back that curved in the most. Ally wordlessly smiled at him when she realized he’d returned, and he walked over to her. Jack handed her the towel, but before she could move, he leaned over and kissed the small of her back.

“What are you doing?” she giggled, looking over her shoulder at him.

“How are you so sexy?” he mumbled. He started at the spot he’d just kissed and smoothed his palm over the curve of her ass.

Ally raised her eyebrows at him. “What?” she asked.

“You’re just fucking sexy, that’s all,” he said, and for a moment, she stared at him like someone saying something like that to her was also on her list of things she couldn’t believe was happening.

He left her on the bed and picked his underwear off the floor, pulling them back on before grabbing his bag. He knew she didn’t have much with her yet – the stuff she hastily packed would arrive in the morning, if her father had remembered to take the boxes to Fed-Ex on time that afternoon – so when he turned back around, he held out his hand, silently offering her a t-shirt from his things. She took it without a word and pulled the well-worn, black vintage band tee over her head while Jack grabbed a bottle of gin and a single glass from the counter across the room. The shirt came halfway down her thighs, and Jack took in the view as he returned to the bed.

He slipped his legs under the covers next to where she leaned against the pillows and handed her the glass. He poured her a drink before he raised the whole bottle to his lips and took a big swig. Ally watched warily, the glass halted halfway to her own lips when she realized what he was doing, and he didn’t notice the look on her face that might’ve told him a brief wondering over what she had gotten herself into with him had just traveled across her mind.

They hadn’t gotten to talk much, their day a whirlwind of driving and spontaneous songwriting and quickly figuring out where she could come into the show at a gas station diner, so Ally swallowed half of her own drink and said, “I have a question.”

“Okay,” Jack muttered.

“Are your audiences gonna be okay with this?” she asked. “With…with me?”

“Why wouldn’t they be?” he asked.

“ _Because_ …they paid for you, you know, to see _you_ , and now some random girl Jackson Maine found is singing half his songs,” she said, her voice diminishing as her self-doubt bubbled to the surface.

Jack leaned in close to her and whispered, “You’ve gotta fucking stop that full name thing.”

Ally breathed out a small chuckle, and when he leaned in a little further to kiss her lips, he tasted like gin and _her_. She pulled back and slumped over a little as she said, “You know what I mean.”

“Don’t worry about that,” he said simply.

“Come on, wouldn’t you be kinda disgruntled if someone you went to see had some chick on stage half the night?” she asked.

“You’re not some chick,” he replied instantly.

“I am to them,” she pointed out.

Jack tucked the gin into his side and reached for her, coaxing her into his lap. She straddled him and curled one arm around his shoulders. He slid the corresponding arm around her waist and grabbed the bottle with his free hand.

“You’re talented,” he said, pointing the nose of the bottle at her. “And I don’t know about you, but I think we sound pretty fucking good together.”

“I _love_ the way we sound together,” she whispered.

“They’ll love it, too,” he said confidently. He nodded towards her and asked, “What did _you_ think of being out there all night?”

“I fucking loved it,” Ally sighed, suddenly beaming. Jack’s smile mirrored hers until she said, “I think I was a fucking mess, though.”

“No, you weren’t,” he promised.

“You kept having to turn me around!” she said with a self-deprecating chuckle.

“That was fucking cute,” he replied.

He pulled her into him as they shared a laugh, burying his chuckles into her neck, and she stayed in his lap even after that laughter eventually died down. Ally pulled the bottle from his hand and refreshed her drink, and Jack’s face sobered.

“Hey, uh…” he said seriously. He grabbed the bottle back from her and took another drink, as if he needed it for what he was about to say. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” Ally asked.

“That you had to see that earlier…with my brother,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Ally said, lightly massaging his shoulder in reassurance.

“No, I just don’t want you to think I’d ever…I’d never do that to you,” he said.

Ally swallowed, the expression on her face growing serious, too. “I didn’t think that,” she said honestly.

“It’s just…” Jack muttered. He snickered and said, “It’s easy to forget we only met a few days ago.”

“I know,” she agreed, her voice soft.

“It’s not a side of me I would’ve wanted you to see while we’re still getting to know each other, that’s all,” he admitted.

“Jack…” Ally said, her lips curling into an almost-amused grin. She tenderly stroked his face with her free hand and said, “We’re about to spend a summer on a tour bus; I think we’re gonna see all kinds of sides to each other pretty fast.”

Jack looked up at her and held her gaze for a moment before he said, “Fuck, you’re right.” With a nervous laugh, he asked, “Are we ready for that?”

Ally quickly began nodding her head in the affirmative until she paused for a moment, halting her movements, and decided, “Not at all.”

Her forehead fell against his as the new couple began laughing again, and he pulled her back in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There might not be any rhyme or reason to updates on this one, so if you're interested enough to not want to miss future chapters, please consider subscribing. I'm also open to ideas! I have a list I'm working off of, but if there's something that fits this time frame that you'd really like to see - no promises, but please let me know & I'll see what I can do.
> 
> Feedback is greatly encouraged & appreciated! Thanks for reading :)


	2. Ride-Along

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kinda blown away by all the comments on the first chapter - thank you guys so much!

A curse escaped Jack’s lips as the multitude of glass bottles he’d piled into his hands slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground, crashing against one another on their way down. Ally gasped awake from her comfortable place in the small bed on the back of the tour bus, and Jack hung his head with remorse. They’d played five shows together so far, their sixth was set for that night, and despite the fact that Ally was not exactly new to having a later schedule, Jack knew she was completely exhausted. The last thing he had wanted to do was wake her up.

“Jack?” she mumbled, her voice equal parts sleepy and startled as she pushed herself up. Abandoning the cluster of bottles on the floor, Jack made his way over to her.

She’d been sleeping soundly on her stomach, having easily slid from his chest to the mattress when he snuck out from underneath her just twenty short minutes ago. The blankets rested around her thighs, leaving her exposed, her body covered only by a pair of black panties.  Her eyelids slowly fluttered like she couldn’t keep them open if she tried as she searched for him, and Jack sat down on the edge of the bed beside her, running a soothing hand down her bare back.

“’s okay,” he hushed. “Fuck. Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

Ally rolled onto her side then, facing him instead of collapsing down onto the mattress. Jack’s hand settled on her waist, and she sighed as she sunk back into the pillow.

“What time is it?” she muttered, her eyes closed.

“’Bout 9:20,” he replied.

Her eyes shot open when she realized she’d slept through two different alarms. “ _Jackson_!” She tried to hiss his name in disbelief, but the second syllable came out as more of a tired whine, bringing a smile to Jack’s lips. She rolled onto her back, Jack’s hand traveling with her, and sighed, “Damn it, she’s coming in…like, _soon_.”

Jack chuckled when he realized _math_ was escaping her in her current state and said, “Yeah, I was tryin’a clean this place up from the party last night and just fucking…sorry.” Ally moaned and closed her eyes again. “You don’t have to get up,” Jack said. “I got her.”

“No, I gotta get up,” Ally insisted.

“Why?” Jack asked. Ally simply bent her arm at the elbow, bringing it up to her shoulder before letting it fall back to the bed. “I’m not gonna let anybody come back here while you’re undressed,” he promised.

Ally mumbled incoherently in response, and he chuckled again. He let his eyes admire her for a moment before he slid his hand up from her waist. When her nipple pebbled beneath his touch, Jack curved his hand around her breast and gave it a gentle squeeze. Ally hummed.

“You trying to get me to go back to sleep or wake up?” she asked accusingly, more articulate than she’d been thus far that morning. Jack pulled his hand away.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Couldn’t help myself.”

“It’s okay, come here,” she said, lazily reaching for him.

Jack pulled the blanket up around her, covering her body as he leaned towards her mouth, and they shared a few soft, unhurried kisses. Her hands fell from his face first, her lips following closely behind as she lost the little bit of energy she’d found within her. When her eyes remained closed, Jack leaned back in. He lightly pecked her lips and whispered instructions to sleep against them. She nodded faintly, her mind already slipping back into unconsciousness.

 

The rest of the buses had gone on to Austin as soon as the afterparty had finally wound down after two o’clock that morning, but Jack’s had stayed behind in Dallas, as a journalist working on an “inside look at Jackson Maine’s new tour” was scheduled to join them for the short, three-hour drive between Texas cities. Jack wasn’t entirely sure what he was going to do with this woman for three whole hours, but Rebecca needed no entertaining. By the time they sat down for a proper interview, she had shared the breakfast she brought on board for everyone, spent some time talking with the bus driver from the front passenger seat, and checked out the parts of the bus not sealed behind the bedroom door. When he glanced at the time, Jack was surprised to find that half of their journey had already gone by.

“So,” Rebecca said, sitting opposite him in the small booth near the bus’s kitchenette. “When I was talking with Gail to arrange this ride-along, she told me to keep it tentative and don’t get my hopes up because Jackson Maine hates his tour bus and tries not to be on it.”

Jack snickered. “I don’t know about the hatin’ it part, but the second half’s true.”

“Why’s that?” she asked.

Jack sighed and glanced around the part of the bus he could see from where he was sitting. It was made for him, outfitted to his specifications, a luxury given to musicians like him once a certain level of success and stardom had been achieved. He wanted for nothing, but all the features in the world didn’t help the fact that days filled with sitting in a metal tube and rolling down the open, barren roads that covered most of the United States had a tendency to drive him a little crazy, keep him just a little too much inside of his own head. Sometimes he welcomed that, drinking himself into a stupor, but more often than not, when the time and distance allowed, he disappeared on his motorcycle after one show and didn’t show up until just before the next one, making his way from city to city on his own, despite the luxury of his customized home on wheels.

“Guess the country just looks better from my bike,” Jack replied. “I like being in it, you know? Out there.”

Rebecca nodded and said, “But when I called to confirm a few days ago, Gail said you’d been staying on the bus this time. What happened?”

In a word, Jack thought to himself, _Ally_.

His band had shared his bus for the first couple of tours, but the level of success and stardom that granted him the personalized tour bus also came with more space and separate buses for the band and the crew, something he explained to Ally as she asked what was going on when she watched Lukas and the guys get on the bus next to the one Jack had directed her to.

“I thought we’d all be crammed into one of these things together,” she admitted, and Jack snickered as she tried to hide her utter and obvious _relief_ over the realization that she was _not_ about to be the only woman on a bus full of men.

If he were being honest with himself, he hadn’t thought she would make much of a difference when it came to that part of his touring experience – after all, he never really road alone, his brother a consistent companion throughout his career – but he quickly found that Ally completely changed his days on the road.

Ally put on music at all hours of the day and danced like no one was watching (even though she knew he always was.) She twirled around the coach with a tambourine in her hands or filled the bus with her powerful voice as her fist served as a makeshift microphone, and Jack thought he could probably spend a lifetime simply watching music move her soul.

Ally stocked the kitchenette with actual _food_ and put it to proper use for what Jack was pretty sure was the first time ever, sharing her father’s Italian recipes with him and laughing about how she probably wasn’t really doing them justice. She sat with him on the couch in the front of the bus, her legs thrown across his thighs, and told him secrets, talked with him for hours like no one else ever had. When there was nothing left to say, she sat enthralled on his lap and rubbed his neck while she quietly watched the country she’d never really seen before go by outside, and just like that, the barren roads didn’t seem as boring as he remembered them.

Ally scribbled notes and wrote lyrics into her songbook while he strummed his guitar, both expressing the feelings that were rapidly growing between them within the safety of new love songs. She sighed his name and tugged on his hair while his tongue wrote tender melodies between her legs, and she curled into his side and napped on his chest, her head tucked underneath his chin as the steady rumble of the road beneath them lulled her to sleep, and the tour bus actually began to feel something like a home.

He was planning on whisking her away on his motorcycle again soon, once her body became a little more acclimated to the schedule of a touring musician. A few weeks on the bus was long enough when he could journey across a state with Ally wrapped tightly around him, her heart beating heavily against his back as adrenaline coursed through her veins, but there was no denying the fact that Ally’s simple presence had made him much more content to stay on the bus for the duration of the drives.

He couldn’t say any of that to Rebecca, of course – nor would he _want_ to – so instead, he simply shrugged and said, “The chauffeuring’s not so bad; I must be turning into an old man.”

Rebecca laughed at that before launching into the heart of the interview. They talked about the music and his most recent album until her brow furrowed suddenly. She glanced over his shoulder towards the back of the bus. Jack briefly turned and looked over his shoulder, too.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“No, I…what is that?” Rebecca asked.

Unsure of what she was talking about, Jack asked, “What’s what?”

“It almost sounds like…a piano?” she asked.

Jack couldn’t hear it himself, but after their first few days on the bus, he’d surprised Ally with a portable keyboard so she wouldn’t have to wait until they stopped somewhere and got a stage set up to put a new idea to music. “It’s probably Ally,” Jack said casually.

Upon the mention of Ally, Rebecca’s eyes grew a little wider. “Your new stage partner?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Jack confirmed.

“I was going to ask you about her,” Rebecca said. She grinned and asked, “New girlfriend, too?”

“Do you need me to go ask her to keep it down?” Jack asked. The speculation as to the nature of his relationship with Ally had hit the Internet almost as quickly as the concert videos themselves, but Jack had no intention of commenting on that.

“Uh, no, but…” Rebecca said, letting the ignored question go. “Do you think she might come out and chat with us?”

“Oh, she’s not hiding or anything like that,” Jack said, not wanting her to get the wrong impression. “No, I told her to stay and get some sleep.”

“Is she okay?” Rebecca asked.

“This tour stuff’s kicking her ass a little bit,” Jack said with a wicked laugh. He turned his head towards the bedroom door and yelled, “ _Ally_!”

The door clicked open, and Ally’s voice asked, “Did you call me?”

“Yeah, c’mere for a minute,” Jack replied.

Ally made her way to the front of the bus, and Jack’s expression softened into a fond smile when he saw her. She was barefoot, in jeans and a t-shirt tied under her breasts with Jack’s signature hat atop her head. “What?” she asked.

“Hi,” Rebecca said. She held out her hand and introduced herself. “Rebecca Richards.”

“Ally Campana,” Ally replied, shaking her hand.

“I was hoping you might join us,” Rebecca said.

“Oh, I don’t want to hijack Jack’s interview,” Ally said with a nervous laugh.

“Five minutes,” Rebecca promised.

Ally looked to Jack for guidance. He simply moved across the bench on his side of the booth to make room for her and nodded to the empty space. “Okay,” Ally agreed.

She slid into the booth next to Jack, and he leaned in. In a quiet voice, he asked, “You feeling better?” Expecting her to respond in a similar tone, he tilted his head again so his ear was nearest her lips.

“Yeah, thank you,” she said softly, catching him with a smile as he sat back up straight.

Jack curled his hand around her thigh beneath the table, knowing she might be a little nervous, and Ally cupped her hand around his wrist as Rebecca confirmed the spelling of Ally’s last name and began asking her some basic get-to-know-you questions.  A calm excitement danced across the face of the woman sitting opposite them, and Jack grinned. She was thinking she’d hit the journalistic jackpot with some kind of exclusive for her story as soon as Ally had decided to join them, Jack could tell.

“Have you always been a big Jackson Maine fan?” Rebecca asked. Jack tried not to roll his eyes at the expected, sure, but obvious question.

“Well…I…” Ally stammered.

“It’s okay,” he laughed. “You can say no.”

“But it’s not no!” Ally insisted, looking at Jack. “I knew your songs when we met. Remember, with the jukebox?” Jack nodded, conceding to that point. Ally turned back to Rebecca and, with a shrug, said, “I just listen to all kinds of things.”

“She means it,” Jack added, knowing that would come off sounding like a line. “She’ll put her music on shuffle, and this, like, complete clusterfuck of noises comes out.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Ally said with an embarrassed laugh.

“It can go from jazz to one of my songs to some electronic dance shit. There’s even a showtune or two in there,” Jack described. Ally let out another embarrassed laugh and looked down at her hands. “No, no, I don’t mean that as a bad thing,” Jack said. He looked at Rebecca and said, “And she can sing fucking _all of it_. I haven’t found a song she can’t sing yet.”

“Well, I don’t think anybody is questioning your vocal abilities after those notes between the choruses in ‘Shallow,’” Rebecca said.

“That just kind of happened,” Ally admitted quietly, her eyes glancing over to Jack.

“Is ‘Shallow’ about you?” Rebecca asked, waving her pen back and forth between them.

Ally looked towards Jack again, and he shrugged, leaving the answer up to her. As far as he was concerned, it was her song, even if he finished it for her. He turned the hand on her thigh over then and laced their fingers together beneath the table.

“Uh, well…the lyrics in the verses were definitely directly inspired by each other, but…I started writing that song before I ever met Jack, so I think it’s about anybody looking for a deeper connection with someone or just…something more meaningful in their life,” Ally explained.

“It’s beautiful,” Rebecca replied.

“Thank you,” Ally said sincerely.

“Jackson says this is the first time you’ve ever done anything like this,” Rebecca said. Ally nodded. “How’s it going?”

“It’s so overwhelming, but it’s unbelievable,” Ally gushed. “His fans have been really welcoming so far.”

“I told her they would be,” Jack said.  

“Are we going to see more new songs from you before the tour’s over?” Rebecca asked.

Ally stuttered again before dissolving into a laugh, slightly caught off-guard by the question, the demand for something new, something else, so _soon_. A little shell-shocked, she answered, “I’m still kind of processing the first one being out in the world.”

“We’ll come up with something,” Jack told Rebecca with a sly grin.

“And on that note, I think I’m gonna get back to…” Ally said, her voice quieting as she spoke. She pointed back towards the bedroom. “If that’s okay.”

“Yeah, sure,” Jack said with a nod.

“Thank you for your time; it was lovely to meet you,” Rebecca said.

“Yeah,” Ally said with a smile. “You too. Thank you.”

Before she left, Ally playfully moved Jack’s hat from her head to his and used a single finger to brush back a few strands of hair that fell into his eyes. They shared a brief grin before Ally said bye to the table and left the booth. Jack instinctively glanced over his shoulder, watching as she walked away, and when he turned back to Rebecca, the look on her face told him she no longer needed his verbal confirmation that Ally was a lot more than just a new part of his act.

“Well,” Jack said, sitting up straight again. He clasped his hands together and leaned onto the table. “Where were we?”

 

Jack wandered back to the bedroom once the bus pulled into the venue in Austin and Rebecca disembarked in favor of observing the activity happening on the stage. Ally still sat on the bed with the keyboard, her songbook off to her side.

“What are you doing back here?” Jack asked, leaning against the door frame.

“Trying to work out the music for ‘Look What I Found,’” she said. “Remember, the song from the diner?”

Jack nodded. “I like that one.”

“Me too,” Ally said with a smile. She was sitting near the foot of the bed, so Jack collapsed on his stomach behind her, and she laughed a little as the mattress rocked beneath his weight.

“Shit, I’m tired,” he muttered into the blankets. Ally wordlessly reached behind herself to rub his back. “I need a fucking nap before the show,” he declared. Ally nodded, but before she could voice her agreement, he rolled onto his side and said, “Hey…congrats.”

“For what?” she asked.

“You survived your first interview,” he said.

“Wh…” Ally stuttered, sudden surprise evident on her face. “I hadn’t even thought of it like that.”

“She wanted to talk to you,” he revealed.

“She did?” Ally asked. Jack nodded. Her nose crinkled as she started laughing and said, “That’s _so cool_.”

Jack grinned, her excitement over the little things like that a complete joy to witness. He sat up and clutched her waist, kissing the side of her head through her hair. “It’s good you think that way. I hate that stuff.”

“Why?” she asked. “You’re such a natural.”

Jack scoffed. “Trust me, babe, I’m not."

“You talked to me like you’d known me all your life from, like, the moment we met,” she pointed out.

“Well, I _like_ you,” he replied immediately, dropping his chin onto her shoulder.

“Well, what I heard through the wall sounded pretty good,” she assured him, her voice soft.

“You were listenin’?” he asked.

“Maybe a little,” she admitted.

“Speaking of soundin’ good, can I hear the song?”

“Okay,” Ally agreed. “I’m not sure I have it in the right key yet, though.”

He picked his head off her shoulder and settled back on the bed behind her. “Well, let's hear it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, feedback's greatly appreciated. Thanks so much for reading!


	3. Questions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a little long...but it's a little longer to make up for it!

After living a few weeks of her unexpected new reality, Ally thought her days of wondering when she was going to wake up from what surely had to be some sort of elaborate dream were behind her.

Waking naturally, she felt as peaceful as the atmosphere of the quiet hotel room in the Wichita Mountains, the room illuminated by the light of the early morning sun spilling through the thin curtains. She relished in the comfort of the warm bed for a moment before looking towards the bedside table. The red numbers on the digital clock told her the alarm she’d set wasn’t due to go off for another fifteen minutes, but the little light indicating a notification was awaiting her flashed in the corner of her phone. The internet service in the mountains had been a little spotty since they arrived, but soon, she was eagerly reading a new article about Jackson Maine’s latest tour in nothing but his t-shirt, the man himself snoring softly beside her in their shared bed, and she wondered again how on earth she’d ever ended up there.

The snoring stopped a few minutes later, but Ally hardly noticed until Jack shifted a little closer to her and muttered, in a voice husky with sleep, “What’re you giggling at over there?”

“How fucking weird it is to be saving pictures of me and my boyfriend off the internet,” Ally replied with a laugh. “And not just, like, social media. The _internet_.”  

“What?” Jack asked.

She glanced over at him and said, “The article came out this morning, the one Rebecca Richards did.” Jack acknowledged what she said with a moan, and Ally continued, “Remember, the pictures we took before the show in Austin?”

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“Look,” she said softly. She sunk back down into the bed and tilted the phone so he could see, too. His head leaned onto her shoulder, and she tenderly brushed a bit of his hair back when it fell into his eyes. Turning back to the phone, she scrolled to a photo that showed Jack sitting on the steps of his bus, Ally one step beneath him, leaning against his thigh. “They’re so beautiful,” she sighed.

“Yeah, it’s nice,” he said mechanically.

Ally, knowing he’d barely looked at it, turned her head and a shot him a glare. “Be less interested, huh?”

Jack sat up just enough to take the phone out of her hand and reach over her to put it back on the bedside table, ignoring the noise of protest that escaped her throat. On his way back down to the mattress, he wrapped his arm around her middle and pulled her into him. Ally followed his lead and rolled onto her side, letting Jack pull her back tightly against his chest. She closed her eyes, snuggling into their spooning position, and mentally agreed to revisit the article later as his lips began pressing against her shoulder through the fabric of the t-shirt she wore. His hand rested in the gentle curve of her waist, and she brought her arm up to lay on top of his, lacing their fingers together. She tugged his hand forward, bringing his arm all the way around her body.

“This is nice, too,” she said quietly.

Jack nodded against her. After ten minutes of just being together, his breath steady against her neck, Ally thought he’d fallen back to sleep until she felt his hand trying to move from beneath hers. She let him go, and Jack slowly slid his hand down and ducked underneath the hem of her shirt to feel her. Ally instinctively opened her legs a little, humming when his palm slid into place between them. Her mouth opened on an inaudible sigh when he began gently exploring her sex, but it was Jack who groaned aloud.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he breathed. “You’re still wet.” Ally simply grinned, her eyes still closed, and nodded. “This okay?” he asked against her ear.

"Yeah," she muttered softly.

Jack massaged her with his whole hand and rubbed small, slow circles against her clit with one of his fingers, occasionally slipping down to swirl his fingertip around her entrance instead. Ally’s hips began leisurely rotating against him. She could feel his arousal through his underwear as he began to push back against her, so she fit herself more snugly against him, and leaned her head back against his shoulder.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Hey, you,” he replied. He kissed the part of her face he could reach and added, “Good mornin’.”

Ally tilted her head up, twisting slightly to meet him for a kiss, and reached back to curl a hand into his hair. Her breaths grew heavy against his mouth as their lips and bodies moved together until eventually, wordlessly, Ally rolled onto her back, and he pushed the covers away as he moved on top of her, settling between her thighs. Jack pulled his underwear down, leaving it around his knees, and took himself into his own hand, pumping lightly before guiding himself inside of her. He waited then, giving her a moment before he began gently thrusting. Ally’s hands clutched his sides, and she toed his underwear the rest of the way off, curling her legs loosely around his when she was through.

Jack gazed down at her, his arms braced on either side of her body, and she smiled, sliding her hands up to cup his face in her palms. He leaned down to kiss her lips again, and despite the pleasure coursing through her veins, a thought hit her as their lips touched, and she used her hands to gently push him back, cutting their kiss short. He immediately stilled in response.

“Don’t we need to go?” she asked seriously, her hands sliding down to his chest. They were nearly four hours away from the evening’s venue, Jack’s motorcycle waiting for them just outside the small hotel. The only reason she’d even set an alarm that morning was to ensure they made it out of there on time.

“Guess what?” Jack whispered with a mischievous grin. He resumed his motions, thrusting into her again, and Ally moaned, her eyes involuntarily slipping shut for a moment.

“What?” she replied breathlessly.

“It’s our show,” he said, still moving above her. Her stomach flipped a little as he called it _their_ show instead of _his_ show, and he pecked her lips before adding, “If we’re a little late gettin’ there, they just have to wait.”

“ _Jack_ ,” she chuckled.

He kissed her through her laughter and dropped his forehead to rest on hers as they parted. His hand reached for one of her legs, and he clutched her thigh, bringing it up to rest against his side. She moaned again at the new angle, her back arching slightly as she pushed her head back into the pillow. Jack’s hand moved from her thigh and slipped beneath the hem of her shirt again, this time seeking out her breasts. He stilled again as Ally pushed herself up and pulled the t-shirt over her head, dropping it next to them on the bed.

“Maybe I just wanted you one more time before we have to go back to the real fucking world,” Jack quietly admitted as she laid back down below him.

She smiled softly and rolled her hips, encouraging him to move again. He resumed making love to her and dropped his mouth to her breast, but before his lips could begin suckling her skin, she grabbed his face and guided him back up to her. With nothing between them anymore, she curled her arms around his shoulders and pulled him closer to her, bringing their bared skin together as she kissed him. His arms curled under her shoulders, and her fingers thread back into his hair.

She whispered against his mouth, “Well, I guess I can’t argue with that.”

 

After a quick shared shower, Jack hurriedly dressed and declared his intention to get gas and breakfast while she finished getting ready. Ally laughed to herself as soon as he left. He must be used to much higher maintenance women, she thought, because getting ready was going to take her all of about five minutes. Traveling on the motorcycle meant traveling light. She put her clothes on, pulled her hair out of the messy bun she’d tied it into when they hopped in the shower, swiped a tube of chapstick across her lips, and walked around the hotel room, throwing everything else they’d brought with them from the bus back into her large cross-body bag.

As she looked around, making sure she’d gotten everything, her eyes settled on her phone still on the bedside table – the one thing she’d wait until the last minute to unplug – and remembered the article she’d started her morning with. With some time to kill until Jack returned, Ally grabbed her phone with a small grin and lay back against the pillows on the still-turned down bed. She started reading it all over again, and when she reached the end, she found her eyes drawn to the number of comments encased within parenthesis at the bottom of the page. Ally hesitated for a moment, then tapped the number to open the comment section.

She should’ve known better.

She _did_ know better, in fact. He’d warned her. The first thing he’d done after the show in Arizona (after procuring a drink) was take the phone out of her hand mid-search with a simple warning of _don’t_ \- don’t search for comments, don’t look at what people were saying online. He’d advised her not to look at anything about them at all, and though she still watched the original, viral ‘Shallow’ video nearly every time he wasn’t around to tease her for watching it _again_ , she tried to take that advice.

The truth was she didn’t think of herself as a public figure. She knew she wasn’t quite anonymous anymore, but even though she could see all the cell phones pointed at them from the stage, even though she knew clips from concerts hit Twitter almost in real time, she didn’t think of herself as famous. She didn’t _feel_ famous. Not like Jack. And even though she was featured more prominently than she’d expected to be in Rebecca’s story, it hadn’t even really occurred to her to consider what social media might be like from his side.

She should’ve known better.

Jack returned with a handful of food from the hotel lobby and a smile on his face, relaxed and nearly glowing from their little getaway despite the fact that it was coming to an end. “Sorry I took so long,” he said, kicking the door shut behind him. With a chuckle, he explained, “This kid over at breakfast wanted a picture, talked my fucking ear off.”

“That’s okay,” Ally muttered, her face expressionless. She walked over to the table Jack had dumped everything on and started picking at a blueberry muffin.

“Hey,” Jack said. Ally glanced over at him. His smile faded, and he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Ally said with a nod.

She sat back down on the edge of the bed while he slid into a chair at the table, and they ate quickly in silence. When she stood up first, he hopped up, too, and gently grabbed her. She looked up at him, and he brushed a lock of dark hair behind her ear.

“I promise next time we run off, I’ll take you somewhere more interesting,” he said. “But I kinda liked just shutting myself in this little room with you for two days.” He leaned in close as he finished his statement, dropping his head to hers, and he felt her relax into his embrace.

Ally smiled, a hint of sadness behind it, and said, “Yeah, it was great.”

Jack frowned. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

She nodded, her smile a little brighter. “Yeah,” she said again.

Jack rubbed her back, trying to soothe whatever was bothering her for a moment before he let her go. He picked one of the helmets off the dresser and handed it to her.

“Let’s ride,” he said.

 

Ally leant against the bike as Jack slid his card into the pump for their second fill-up of the trip. One arm crossed her chest, the other dangling at her side holding onto her helmet, and she couldn’t take her eyes off of him, admiring the way he looked in the sunlight. Her body craved his, even after just a few minutes apart, and she reached for Jack’s empty hand with her free one.

He turned at the unexpected contact and grinned at her. Without a word, he moved towards her, placing a small kiss on her lips. As he started to pull back, Ally dropped the helmet to the ground and grabbed his face, pulling him back in for a deeper kiss. Jack’s arm came around her waist, the gas pump momentarily forgotten in his other hand. When they separated, he placed another short kiss on her mouth and got the gas started.

“You’d tell me, right?” he asked, enveloping her back into his arms. “If something was wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Ally lied.

She could tell Jack didn’t really believe her as his blue eyes examined her face, but instead of pushing, he simply nodded and brushed her hair back again. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah.”

When they hopped back on the bike, she curled into his back, holding him tight, and he held onto her knee for just a moment before heading back for the highway.

 

The problem with the motorcycle, Ally decided, is that they couldn’t talk to each other like they could in the bus or in a normal car, so after four hours of nothing but her own racing thoughts, Ally found herself exhausted by the time they reached their new hotel. She collapsed in the corner of the couch in the suite, her legs curled beneath her, and glanced over at the man waiting patiently at the dining table. He was already almost two whole beers in, having refrained from drinking the night before to ensure their safe arrival on the bike, and while her head knew he’d given her absolutely no reason to feel the way she’d been feeling since she read some of the comments online, her chest felt heavy, her heart hurt, and she couldn’t believe how stupid she was being.

When the pizza delivery guy arrived with their food, Jack balanced the various takeout boxes onto one hand – they’d ordered entirely too much for just the two of them yet again – and carried everything to the coffee table in front of her instead of setting it down on the dining table. He sat down on the table next to the food, placing himself directly across from her. Her eyes had been fixated on nothing in particular on the hotel carpet, and her gaze remained on the floor as he touched the outside of her knees with each hand.

“What’s going on?” he demanded, his tone gentle. Her eyes shifted to meet his. “You were happy when we got out of the shower, and now you’re not, and I just have no _fucking_ clue what I did, Ally.”

“Oh my god, _no_ , you didn’t do anything,” she sighed immediately, placing a reassuring hand on his chest.

“You just seem, like, lost in thought or something,” he said.

“It’s just…” Ally started. She stopped herself mid-sentence, pursed her lips, changed her mind, dropped her hand from his body, and said, “It’s nothing.”

She reached for the bag of cheesy bread, and Jack caught her arm on the way, pulling her attention to him instead. “No, hey,” he said. “What were you about to say?”

“It’s stupid,” Ally sighed.

“It’s bothering you,” he said. “It’s not stupid.”

She was quiet for a moment, her gaze dropping to where his hand rested on her arm. She pulled away from him again and looked to her own hands in her lap and admitted, in a quiet voice, “I’m not sure I really want to know the answer.”

“What answer?” Jack asked.

Ally sighed again, realizing she was about to force a conversation she wasn’t sure they were ready for, and mustered up the courage to look at him as she asked, “Am I just a…you know, like a tour girlfriend?”

“What’s a tour girlfriend?” Jack asked honestly.

“You know, a girl you take around the country and fuck on the road and then never see again when the tour ends,” Ally explained quietly.

Concern colored his face. “Did I do something to make you feel like that?” he asked.

“ _No_!” Ally said quickly. “No, you’re great. You’re…wonderful. I was just…it was just something that popped in my head. I was _just_ wondering.”

“I’ve never taken a girl on tour before,” Jack told her. Ally swallowed, remaining quiet as she kept her eyes on his. “And I’ve sure as shit never invited a girl _on_ _stage_ before.”

Ally nodded softly. “Your brother told me that.”

“Well, it’s true,” Jack told her.

“I believe that,” Ally replied. “That’s not…look, I shouldn’t have said anything, okay? I told you it was stupid. Just forget everything I just said.”

She reached for the food again, and Jack grabbed her arm again, but this time, he moved to the couch next to her and scooped her into his lap. Her body was tense as he put his arms around her, but she relaxed within moments, dropping her forehead to his with a sigh.

“You’re not just some girl I’m fucking on the road,” he promised. “The thought of never seeing you again after the tour ends…of never hearing your voice again…well, that’s something I don’t even want to fucking think about, okay?”

She remained quiet again, taking in the words he’d just said to her. When he didn’t receive a response, he whispered her name, and she picked her head up, pulling back to meet his eyes.

“Are you hearing me?” he asked.

“Yeah, I hear you,” she said. He pecked her lips, and she slid off his lap. They looked at each other for a moment before he opened the pizza box, handed her a slice, and picked up one for himself.

“Fucking road girlfriend,” he muttered as he took a bite. “What the hell put that idea in your head?”

“Just something stupid I read online,” she admitted. Jack looked at her, his eyes begging her to tell him she was kidding, and Ally sighed. “I _know_. I was excited about the article.”

“Is that what people are saying about us?” he asked.

“Not generally,” Ally said. “Just, you know, there’s always a few assholes who gotta say stuff like that.”

“Baby, you gotta ignore all that bullshit if you’re gonna look at it,” Jack said. “Don’t let it get to you.”

“How do you do that?” she asked honestly.

“You remember that they don’t fucking know us; they don’t know the truth,” Jack said. “What it looks like to everyone else isn’t always what’s real. You understand?” Ally nodded, a small smile teasing her lips, and Jack turned back to their food. “Shit, I left the drinks in the kitchen.”

“I’ll get them,” Ally volunteered. She tossed her half-eaten slice of pizza back into the box and stood up.

“So you read a bunch of comments while I was out?” Jack asked. “What else did they say?”

“People like the song and the music,” she said. “There…there were a couple women saying I’m too ugly for you, but…I know they’re just jealous because you’ve got your arm around me and not them.”

She nearly couldn’t believe the words that had just come out of her own mouth then because there was a time when a comment like that would’ve been the one to destroy her, but while reading those opinions still made a part of her feel like the girl who didn’t know how to respond when the music executives told her they’d consider signing her if she’d consider changing her face, she also truly knew that what she’d just said to Jack was true. Jack swiftly stood up and met her in the kitchen. He took the beers out of her hand and put them back on the counter before dragging her over to a mirror, wrapping his arm around her from behind.

“What are you… _Jack_ ,” she sighed.

“They must be fucking blind because you’re too pretty for me,” he said.

Ally chuckled at the compliment and said, “Oh, come on.”

“I mean it; what’s a beauty like you doing with a beast like me?” he said.

Ally laughed again. “Stop!”

“You’re so beautiful,” he said honestly. A playful grin covered his face again, and he added, “And I’m not just saying that because you let me see you naked.”

“Jackson…” she muttered. She turned around in his arms and affectionately cupped his face in her palm, her thumb stroking his cheek.

“Seriously,” Jack muttered, his own insecurities bubbling to the surface. “Have I done anything to make you feel like I’m not in this?”

“ _Oh, honey_ , it’s the opposite,” Ally sighed. “I’m so sorry I made you question this.”

“What does that mean, the opposite?”

“This is _really good_ , you know? You and me…this is really fucking good,” she explained. “I…I’ve never…I don’t think I’ve ever felt like this before, so the thought that that might be blinding me, that I might not be seeing something that should be obvious…”

A tear dripped down her face then, from the stress over the idea that they might not be what she thought they were, from the relief over her beautiful man telling her those fears were, as her head knew all along, unfounded. Jack immediately reached up to dry the wet trail left on her cheek.

“I just got scared of losing you,” she recognized. “That’s all.”

“This is why I told you not to look at any of that,” he explained. “I didn’t want you crying over some mean thing someone said behind a fucking screen.”

“It was _that_ inevitable, huh?” she asked. Jack shrugged. "I won’t look again,” she promised.

He dropped his head to hers again and, with the same boyish grin on his face, asked, “Want me to prove how much I care about you? That food’ll keep.”

“You don’t need to prove anything,” she said quietly. “I know.”

“Yeah, but _can I_ prove it to you?” he asked.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she said honestly, a delicious soreness lingering between her legs.

She moved in, closing the space between them, and hugged him. His arms tightened around her, too, and Ally sighed, relaxing into his body and his embrace.

“This is all I need right now,” she assured him. “Just this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Leave a note if you'd like :) They're always so appreciated!


	4. Itinerary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In one of the interviews for the movie, Anthony Ramos said that his character (Ramon) was an aspiring dancer, but most of that backstory ended up getting cut from the final version of the film. I'm operating under the assumption that that's still canon, so I wanted to call attention to it in case anyone didn't know, because there's a slight reference to it here. 
> 
> I hope you guys are still hanging in here with me. Thank you so much for all the comments so far. You're the best :)

As May rolled into June and the bus rolled down the open road, Jack sat on the couch near the front of the tour bus, his legs stretched out across the cushions. He pulled the half-empty beer bottle away from his lips and dropped his hand, dangling it off the side of the couch as he worked on the open laptop in his lap with the other. They were in the middle of a long day of driving, and Jack had pulled the curtains on the window near the couch shut, blocking the warm rays of the bright afternoon sun from spilling in through the glass and creating a glare on his computer screen.

Ally sat at the table on the other side of the bus, painting her nails for the next night’s show. Her back was to the front of the bus, putting her face-to-face with Jack should they both look to the other at the same time. Despite the task in front of her, Jack watched as she got sidetracked with every few strokes of her polish brush, momentarily abandoning her work in favor of gazing out her uncovered window at the road they’d just traveled. The sun bounced off her dark hair, making it look almost golden in the right light, and just as Ally found herself repeatedly distracted by the outside world, Jack found himself repeatedly distracted by her.

They hadn’t spoken to one another in a while, Jack realized as he looked up at her again. Hadn’t talked at all, in fact, since Ally wandered out with a handful of beauty products and greeted him as she slid into the booth across from where he sat. A peaceful calm had settled between them; music from the radio filled their comfortable silence. Jack knew from the movement of her mouth that she was singing quietly to herself, soft whispers of lyrics escaping Ally’s lips as she worked on her nails, but Jack could only hear the music itself. Occasionally, she hit a note loudly enough to overcome his growing hearing deficiencies, and his lips curled into a small grin whenever he caught a hint of the voice that had captured his heart.

A song she particularly liked came on the radio, and Ally sang louder. By the time the chorus began, she overpowered the radio entirely, and Jack joined in, his voice easily finding a harmony with hers. Ally grinned when she heard his voice, momentarily glancing his way before dropping her gaze to the table again. They sang the rest of the song together, and when it ended, and the radio transitioned into a commercial break, a delighted chuckle escaped Ally’s lips.

“You’re distracting me, woman,” Jack muttered, his eyes on her.

“What’re you doing over there anyway?” Ally asked.

“Checking out the schedule,” he answered. It was something he liked to do at the beginning of each month to refresh his memory as to where he was headed and make sure everything was in order with any reservations Gail had secured. He also combed the calendar for blocks of time long enough to allow him to sneak away, the trips on his motorcycle often not as spontaneous as his brother had always believed. “Looking for some free time to run off with my girl,” he added. 

“Any of that come up?” Ally asked hopefully.

“I haven’t gotten very far,” Jack admitted with a laugh. Ally laughed, too.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll stop singing.”

“Don’t you dare,” Jack replied.

An easy silence fell over them again as Ally turned back to her nails and the radio returned to playing music. Jack’s eyes stayed on her for another moment, the soft smile lingering on her face making her look as radiant as the outside sun. He hadn’t known her long enough to really know what she was like before, but he knew she was happier there, on tour with him, singing on “the big stages” than she’d been in the life she so quickly left behind, so when a worrying thought crossed his mind as he finally reached the end of the month’s schedule, he cautiously glanced back up at her.

“Hey, Ally?” he said, setting his now-empty beer down on the table behind him.

“What?” she replied instantly.

“Do you have a passport?” he asked.

Ally let out a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a scoff and, without looking up from her task, said, “I was a fucking waitress; where the fuck would I have gone?”

His stomach dropped, though he’d known all along that’s what she was going to say. Jack groaned and scrubbed his hands over his face. “ _Shit_ , I was afraid that was gonna be the answer.”

Ally finally looked up again, concern coloring her own face as she responded to his reaction. “What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

“You didn’t notice anything on the show schedule?” he asked.

“I haven’t been looking,” she admitted.

“What do you mean you haven’t been looking?” he asked.

“Well, when you’ve hardly been anywhere, it’s kind of fun to not know where you’re going until you get there,” she said. The implication behind what he had asked her finally caught up to her, and the look on her face transformed into a mixture of apprehension and cautious excitement. “Wait, do I need a passpo…why do I need a passport?”

Jack swung himself off the couch and carried the laptop over to the table. He slid into the booth across from her, used his free hand to gently move her open polishes to the side of the table, and put the laptop down between them, turning the screen towards her. “That’s why,” he said.

It took a moment for Ally’s eyes to find what he was talking about, but when she did, they nearly doubled in size. “ _Glastonbury_?” she exclaimed. “You’re booked at Glastonbury? We’re going to _Europe_?” He held her gaze for a moment, watching as her mind caught up to the situation at hand again. Her face fell just as quickly as it’d just lit up, and she said, “You…you’re going to Europe.”

“You’re coming, too,” Jack said confidently.

“ _Jack_ , I…how?” she asked.

“We’ll get you a passport,” he said.

“It’s, like, three and a half weeks; there’s no way,” she sighed. She reached over the table and cupped his chin in her palm. She shot him a smile, a lingering hint of disappointment behind it, and said, “That cowboy charm of yours can’t turn every no into a yes, you know?”

Jack grabbed her wrist and gently pulled her palm to his lips for a kiss. “Good thing it’s not a no yet,” he said. He returned to the couch to retrieve his phone and said, “You’re giving up too easy.”

“What are you doing?” she asked as he slid back into the booth and laid his phone face-up on the table. He opted to sit down next to her, his hip bumping against hers to get her to move over and give him room to join her.

Gail’s voice rang out through the cabin of the bus. “Hey, Jack,” she said. “Did you get the June itinerary?”

“Yeah, about that,” Jack replied. “We have a little problem. Ally’s here, too, by the way; you’re on the speaker phone.”

“Hi, Ally,” Gail said. Before Ally could return the greeting, Gail asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Ally doesn’t have a passport,” Jack revealed. He was putting on a good show, he thought, keeping his voice cool despite the small sense of panic building in his gut. “Do we have time to rush one for her? Whatever it takes.”

“Oh my god, Jack,” Gail said. “I’m so sorry; I should’ve asked if she had one weeks ago.”

“It’s not your fault, Gail,” Ally said with a chuckle.

“No, but most Americans don’t have one,” Gail said. “I didn’t even think to ask.”

“I didn’t, either,” Jack admitted. “So what can we do?”

“Let me look into it; give me just a minute,” Gail said.  

As sounds of Gail typing in the background filled the bus, Ally reached over to Jack’s phone and pressed the mute button so she wouldn’t be able to hear them. “Jack, it’s okay,” she said.

“What’s okay?” he asked.

“This,” she said. “I might get another chance to go to Europe someday. It’s my fault for not looking at the schedule.”

“What are you saying?” he asked.

“You can do the show without me,” Ally said. “It’s okay.”

“I don’t want to do the show without you,” he argued.

Before she could say anything else, Gail’s voice rang out from the phone again. “Ally?” she asked.

Ally unmuted the phone. “Yeah?” she replied.

“Do you have a copy of your birth certificate?” she asked.

“Not on me,” Ally said. “Dad has it back home.”

“Okay,” Gail said with a determined sigh. “We should still be able to do it with the expedited service. I’m downloading the application paperwork and emailing it to Jack right now. We’ll need Ally’s dad to overnight her birth certificate to tonight’s hotel, but if we can get that and turn it all in tomorrow before the show, hopefully…”

Jack clapped his hands together in triumph. He could do a show without her if it came down to it, of course, but a selfish part of him would rather cancel the appearance entirely than go to Europe alone. He also knew that likely wouldn’t be an option, so as the possibility of having to leave her behind diminished, he grinned and said, “What would I do without you, Gail?”

“Just send the paperwork back to me when you’re done, and I can print it out over here for tomorrow, okay?” Gail said.

“Thanks, Gail,” Ally said. She disconnected the call and looked at Jack.

“See?” he said, his voice nearly gloating as relief filled his being. “Giving up too easy.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Ally teased. “Can’t stand the thought of doing _one_ show without me, huh?”

“Now why the fuck would I want to do that?” he asked.

“Don’t wanna just hang with the boys like in the good ol’ days?” she continued. “This was your chance.”

“The good ol’ days?” he repeated.

“Yeah, you know, before I came along and started cramping your road style,” she said.

Jack laughed, knowing she was being anything but serious, and playfully asked, “Is that what you think you’re doing?”

Ally shrugged, her poker face failing as a grin teased the edges of her mouth. Jack kissed the side of her forehead and turned back to his laptop. He found the new email from Gail and opened the document containing the passport application.

“Looks easy enough,” he said, scrolling through the pages. When he looked over at Ally again, she was sitting like she’d been suddenly frozen in place near the window, her hands clutching the side of the table, a dazed look on her face. “Hey,” he said, drawing her attention. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “It’s just…” She raised her hands as if she were going to bury them in her hair until she remembered her nails might still be wet and changed course, dropping them to her lap instead. “Europe and _Glastonbury_ and I’ve never…how long is that flight? I’ve never been on a flight that long before.” She let out a nervous laugh and said, “I must seem so unsophisticated to you.”

“No,” Jack said immediately.

“Come on,” she scoffed.

“Hey,” he said. “When you’ve done this as many times as I have over the years, it’s a hell of a lot more fun with someone who’s never done it before.”

“Really?” she asked.

Jack leaned over and kissed her, his mouth pressing against hers for several moments before pulling away. “Call your dad,” he said, sliding out of the booth.

 

“What the hell do you need a passport for?” Lorenzo asked.

Lorenzo’s voice rang out from the speaker phone as Jack made his way back from the bathroom. Ally had her phone on the table next to the one he’d left behind, scrolling through the paperwork on his laptop as she talked to him. Privacy was hard to come by in such close quarters, and even though he knew she must not have been expecting it when she put him on speaker phone, and even though he could still hear most of what Lorenzo was saying, Jack hung back around the bunks, not wanting to intrude on the conversation.

“Jack’s booked at Glastonbury at the end of the month,” Ally explained calmly.

“ _Oh_ , he’s taking you to _Europe_ now?” Lorenzo asked. Ally stilled and glanced over at the phone as if she were glaring at him instead.

“Why’re you saying it like that?” Ally asked with a scowl.

“This guy just shows up out of nowhere and takes my daughter away – on a _motorcycle_ , no less – to god knows where…” Lorenzo started.

“You _wanted_ me to do this!” Ally interrupted.

“And I don’t know when I’m gonna see her again…” Lorenzo continued, talking over her as if she’d said nothing at all.

“‘ _Sweetheart, are you crazy? You don’t say no to an opportunity like that_ ,’” Ally said, mocking his low voice, repeating what he’d said when she’d asked him if he would be okay if she left.

“And now he wants to take you all the way to _Europe_?” Lorenzo finished.

Back in the bunks, Jack chuckled quietly to himself. He didn’t know how either of them had caught a word the other had said in the last few breaths, but somehow, they had.

“No, Dad, _I_ want to go to Europe,” Ally huffed. “Are you gonna send the birth certificate or not?”

“Of course I am,” Lorenzo sighed. “Give me the address.”

Jack re-entered the room just as Ally was hanging up the call, and her eyes widened. “How much of that did you hear?” she asked.

“Most of it,” he admitted, grabbing a fresh beer from the fridge. “Do you always do that?”

“Talk over each other like that?” Ally asked. Jack nodded. “Only about every other day.”

He slid back into the booth across from her and asked, “Does your dad really feel like that about me?”

Ally scoffed. “No, he’s just protective,” she said simply.

“Well, I guess I did just swoop in out of fucking nowhere and take his daughter away,” Jack laughed. He’d never looked at it from Lorenzo’s perspective before, but as soon as he did, he couldn’t imagine a father seeing it any other way.

“His daughter went pretty willingly,” Ally bluntly replied. She looked up at him and smiled and said, “He just misses me; that’s all.”

“Have you always lived together?” Jack asked.

“Not always, but I’ve always been within…well, it’s SoCal so not far, really, but, like, an hour and a half with all the fucking traffic,” Ally said.

Jack chuckled. “Yeah,” he said. “You’ve been some places, though, right? It’s not like you’ve never left California before?”

“No, it’s not like that,” Ally said. “You been to Vegas?”

“Yeah,” Jack replied.

She grinned and said, “Well, you haven’t _really_ done Vegas until you’ve done it with a bunch of drag queens, believe me.”

Jack laughed and muttered, “ _Wow_ …” as he tried to picture Ally and the girls he met in the bar on the Vegas Strip. He gestured to his own face and said, “Did you do the whole…with the eyebrows?”

“Yeah, sometimes,” she laughed.

“Well, I’d love to see what that’s like,” he said.

“Maybe we’ll take you with us next time.”

“New York?” Jack guessed.

Ally hummed and scrunched up her nose. “I have a complicated relationship with New York.”

Jack reached across the table and tenderly brushed her hair, his fingers traveling around the curve of her ear. “Tell me sometime?” he asked softly.

Ally shrugged. “I’ll tell you now. Dad took me for my high school graduation gift.” A fond smile crossed her face as she added, “I think he saved all four years to make that happen.”

Jack’s smile mirrored hers. “How was it?” he asked.

“It was, you know, it was magic. It was what a girl who grew up with her head in the clouds thinks New York City is gonna be.” She sighed and said, “Then me and Ramon went a few times when we scraped together enough money and time off to get out there for auditions and meetings and stuff.”

“Those never went well?” Jack asked.

Ally paused for a minute before she shrugged again and said, “We got in the room. Some people don’t even get that, but…well, you found us in a drag bar, so…” She trailed off, hoping he would let her leave it there, recollections she wasn’t quite ready to share of nights spent crying in Ramon’s arms in tiny hotel rooms bubbling to the surface of her memories. Before he could say anything, she pushed those thoughts aside and said, “We always built in one fun day, though. Got up early, rushed a show, hung out in Central Park, ran around the city looking for all the trendy food.”

Jack groaned. “Oh god, you weren’t one of those people waiting an hour for edible cookie dough or some shit, were you?” he asked.

Ally shamelessly laughed. “Is that a dealbreaker for you?”

Jack simply shook his head and slid out of the booth again. He wandered over to the kitchen area, pulling open one drawer after another until he found what he was looking for. He returned to the table with a notepad and a pen and placed them both in front of Ally.

“Make a list,” he said.

“Of what?” she asked.

“You’ve got the tour schedule,” he said, nodding towards the laptop. “Make a list of things nearby, whatever you want to do. We’ll try to make it happen.”

“Are you serious?” Ally asked.

“Yeah, why not?” Jack said. “I told you we could do something new after we spent our last days off just holed up in that hotel in the mountains.”

“Yeah, but I liked that,” she said with a sly grin.

“I did, too,” he admitted. He leaned in closer to her, the tip of his nose almost meeting hers and said, “But I kinda like the idea of showing you the world, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback is always appreciated! Thanks for reading :)


	5. Rendezvous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a good 1700 words more than I usually aim for with these chapters, so I'm sorry for that, but I just couldn't cut any of it. I think this might be my favorite one yet.
> 
> For those of you who have seen the Encore edition of the movie, this one's based off the very short added clip in which Jack and Ally sneak out of one of the bunk beds on Jack's bus.

“Ally!” Gail called from offstage. On stage, Ally’s shoulders slumped, Gail’s urgent voice ruining her moment of tranquility.

Ally sat behind one of the microphones positioned at the front of the stage, one foot on the highest rung of the stool, the other dangling towards the floor, her foot not quite reaching. She squinted against the harsh evening sunlight as it blazed down across the empty arena in front of her. It wouldn’t be empty for much longer; Jackson’s fans had already begun to tailgate in the parking lot on the other side of the outer lawn seating.

From their very first show together, Jack had encouraged her to take it all in. She never quite seemed to accomplish that during a show, the roar of the audience and the thrill of performing on stages she’d only dreamed of thrilling her in a way she’d never experienced before, but eventually, she discovered that the time right _before_ a show, when the stage was set and the atmosphere around the venue increasingly buzzed with the anticipation of the upcoming performance, was perfect for a few quiet moments alone.

Until Jack’s assistant ran over to her in a panic, that is.

“Hey,” Ally breathed, a little startled by Gail’s demeanor. She slid off the stool and glanced down as Gail clutched her arm and tried to catch her breath. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you know where Jack is?” she asked.

“What?” Ally asked.

“Lukas came and told me Jack didn’t show up for the soundcheck.”

Ally pulled her phone out of the back pocket on her leopard-print pants; the digital time reflected on the screen told her that they were, in fact, nearly half an hour past the time they usually ran through a few songs. Ally chuckled nervously, almost embarrassed to have been sitting out there for that long, and slid the phone back into her pocket.

“I guess I lost track of time,” she admitted.

“Yeah, you and your boyfriend have that in common,” Gail replied, clearly frazzled. Ally frowned, still not quite understanding the situation, and Gail explained, “We can’t find him.”

“What do you mean you can’t find him?” Ally asked.

“Nobody seems to know where he is, and…that’s not that unusual when he’s been out on his bike. He’s always cut that a little too close for everyone’s comfort. Bobby used to yell at him for how late he always showed up to his own shows, but he rode in on the bus this morning, and his bike is still here, and Lukas said _you_ were on stage, and now the doors are opening in…” Gail looked at her watch. “Seventy-three minutes, and we can’t find him. You were kind of my last hope.”

“Um…okay…um… _breathe_ ,” Ally said with a nervous chuckle. “I’ll go look for him.”

“Seventy-three minutes, Ally!” Gail cried.

Ally bent her arm beneath Gail’s to grab hold of her elbow. “If I’m not back with him in twenty, I’ll do the soundcheck by myself, okay?” She shrugged and said, “I know that’s not ideal, but at least we’ll know stuff’s working.”

“Okay,” Gail nodded. She took a breath and repeated, “Okay, that could work.”

“We’ll find him,” Ally said. She smiled and said, “It’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” Gail repeated again. “I’m gonna keep looking.”

Ally nodded, and Gail scurried back offstage to continue her search. Ally took a moment to think, ringing her hands in front of her chest as she slowly wandered about the stage. She didn’t think Jack would’ve left – not without her – and Gail said his bike was accounted for. She’d been with him up until the moment she’d left to wander around on her own, though judging from the time she’d just seen on her phone, that had to have been over an hour ago. She tried to remember – had he said anything that morning, _done_ anything…

Her face changed then, her expression reflecting a moment of silent realization as she remembered how much he’d been drinking that morning – more so than usual, she’d thought. She hadn’t seen him take anything else, but the drugs were everywhere, especially once the buses all came back together at the site of a show. Her eyes closed for a moment, the possibility of Jack being passed out somewhere suddenly seeming almost inevitable.

Before she could work herself up into too much worry, she headed for the buses and climbed back onto the one she shared with him. The doors were open, as they all tended to be on show nights, and she found two of the stagehands taking a break from the outside sun in the front of the bus. Water bottles in hand, one of them leaned against one of the inside walls while the other rested on the couch. One of them greeted her as she boarded the bus, and Ally smiled at them as she passed, mentally striking the option of finding Jack slumped on the couch off her list.

She headed for their bedroom in the back next, finding the door cracked open. The bed inside was made and empty, just as she’d left it that morning, so she turned towards the bathroom next. Ally knocked gently on the closed door.

“Jack?” she called, tapping her knuckles against the door again. She twisted the knob when all behind the door seemed silent, looked inside, and found that room empty as well.

With a sigh, she left the bathroom door open and turned back towards the front of the bus, her hands resting on her hips. She knew it was a long-shot – his own tour bus surely would’ve been the first place anyone looking for him would’ve thought to check, whether they knew he’d been drinking or not – but the likely alternative conjured up an image of Jack, drunk, lost, and possibly unconscious somewhere in the tunnels of the venue, and that was something she hadn’t wanted to think about. Not entirely sure where to look next, Ally let out a breath and headed for the front of the bus, intending to disembark.

She only made it two steps forward before she abruptly stopped between the bunks, an idea tickling the back of her mind. Glancing at the six bunks surrounding her, she noticed only two had the curtains drawn all the way shut; she knew the closed one on the bottom was a mess, the “junk bunk” they called it, full of dirty clothes, Ally’s crossbody bag, an old guitar that needed fixing, and various other things they hadn’t come up with a proper place for. She didn’t know why the one above it was closed, too, so she reached out and grasped the side of the curtain, pulling it back just enough to get a look inside.

Ally held her hair back as she leaned over, and her face softened when she found her man sleeping soundly in the middle bunk, one arm bent beneath his head, his back as flat against the side of the bus as he could manage. Ally knew his slumber was likely alcohol-induced, knew waking him up might not be an easy task, but she was encouraged by the fact that he hadn’t been too far gone to get himself into the bunk bed in the first place. She reached in, her head ducking into the bunk, and grazed her fingers across his t-shirt clad chest.

“Jack,” she whispered. When he didn’t so much as stir, she poked him again and, in a slightly louder voice, said, “Jackson!”

Jack snored in response, and Ally rolled her eyes. She pulled the curtain back a little further, and with a small sigh, she carefully slid into the bunk with him. They barely fit in one, the two of them together, but once she’d made it, she pulled the curtain shut behind her and shifted onto her side to face him, propping herself up on her forearm.

“Jack,” she whispered. She brushed her fingers against his chest again and placed her other hand on his cheek. When her touch didn’t pull him from his slumber, she leaned in and began peppering soft kisses across his face. “Come on, honey,” she begged.

Ally rubbed his chest lightly, trying to keep her waking tactics gentle. His heart beat steadily beneath her fingertips, and she stilled, her breathing slow and even as she simply looked at him. Peace didn’t always come easy to him, and a part of Ally wanted to leave him alone, to just stay right there and admire him for a while in the way she sometimes caught him admiring her when she woke up next to him or wrapped in his arms. Her eyes slipped shut for a moment as she told herself she couldn’t do that, and she resumed the movements against his chest, her hand rubbing in small circles against his t-shirt. Her heart full, she ducked her head and supplemented her touch with a tiny peck on his lips.  

Jack moved so slightly then that she wasn’t sure whether it was an unconscious twitch or whether he was finally beginning to respond to her touch. She leaned back in. His lips were slightly parted as he slept, and she delicately fit hers between them, their mouths melding together as he finally came awake. The gentle tug she felt on her top lip served as the only sign that he was cognizant again, and when she slowly pulled out of the kiss, her teeth grazed his bottom lip, and a small groan escaped his throat. He leaned towards her as he lost her, his semi-conscious body already missing her warmth.

“You have to wake up, baby,” Ally whispered, her tone sympathetic. She sensually brushed his hair out of his face, her thumb gently stroking his forehead as she did.

“Why’d I have to do that?” he grumbled, his words slurring the way that they did when he hadn’t had enough time to fully sleep off the alcohol.

Knowing there were likely others either on the bus or milling around just outside the bus, they both spoke in hushed tones, the words whispered in the cozy bunk only for the other to hear. Jack rolled his head into the crook of his elbow, moving his ear closer to her lips.

“There’s a show soon,” Ally said, her hand stroking down his side to rest on his hip. “Everyone’s looking for you.”

“They don’t need me,” he insisted, his eyes still closed.

“Oh, they don’t?” Ally asked, an amused grin teasing the edges of her lips. She wasn’t sure he’d remember this later.

“You do the show,” he continued. He shifted a little, as if he was re-settling into the mattress beneath them. “You’re better anyway.”

Ally laughed quietly. “That’s bullshit, and it doesn’t work that way,” she told him. He’d yet to open his eyes, so she laid her head down next to his, placed a single finger on his forehead, and slowly stroked down the center of his face. When she reached the tip of his nose, she said, in a little voice, “The fans are coming in soon; they can’t wait to see you.”

Instead of waking up, Jack simply reached for her with his free arm. His hand instinctively found the bare skin between her small top and her pants, and he slid his arm around her body. As soon as she was securely inside his embrace, he tugged her in and groaned softly as her body clumsily collided with his.

“We should just stay here,” Jack muttered, his fingertips dipping beneath the back hem of her top. He flattened his palm against her bare skin.

Ally decided to indulge him and slung her arm around his shoulder, threading her fingers into his hair. “What are we gonna do here, huh?” she asked. She received incoherent mumbles in return, his eyes still closed. “Come on, cowboy. Wake up.” Ally touched his nose again. “At least look at me?”

Jack’s blue eyes fluttered open, and Ally smiled at him, her head tilting slightly against the pillow. He pulled his hand from her back, slowly reached up, and placed a fingertip on her forehead, lazily drawing down her face, mirroring what she had just done to him. Their eyes remained on each other’s, and Ally suppressed a laugh as he traced her features. His finger lingered on the tip of her nose.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, his voice still dripping with lethargy.

“You’re a little drunk,” Ally replied. He told her that all the time; she knew he meant it, but she still wasn’t used to the compliment.

Jack merely grunted in protest and shook his head. His finger returned to her forehead, starting its slow journey all over again, and Ally’s eyes slipped shut as she felt her entire being relax beneath his touch. Her lips puckered, caressing his finger in a kiss as it crossed her mouth. When his hand dropped off from her face at her chin, she opened her eyes again. The sleepy smile she was met with made her grin even wider. After a moment, Jack, with a surge of seemingly sudden energy, fit his palm around the side of her face and pulled her in.

Ally opened her mouth, meeting his lips willingly, and slowly breathed in. She should’ve known climbing into the bunk to wake him up would turn into something hot and heavy; he had a tendency to be a little handsy when they were just waking up, something she rarely complained about, but she knew it was only a matter of time before Gail decided to retrace her steps and tear the entire venue apart looking for him. Jack’s mouth moved with a delicious ease against hers, and Ally sighed, mentally surrendering her task. She had already been tingling with the anticipation of the imminent concert, the high of performing within her reach, so when the only other thing on the planet that gave her that kind of rush slid his hand down her side and settled against the skin beneath her shirt again, she lit up with desire.

She arched her body against his and held his face as their lips engaged in deep, slow kisses. Jack slipped his other arm out from underneath his own head and curled it around hers, his fingers tangling into her dark hair and bunching it beneath his fist. His tongue teased hers, and heavy breaths mingled between them as they tenderly kissed, taking care to part quietly so as not to give away their hidden location behind the curtain to anyone who might be walking by.

“You still taste like gin,” Ally noted between kisses, the faintest hint of his favored alcohol lingering on his tongue.

“You taste better than gin,” he muttered in response.

“That’s good to know,” Ally said with a laugh, her forehead falling briefly against his before she moved back in to re-capture his lips.

Their kisses grew harder, faster, their mouths dancing as they held each other close. The bed beneath them was only about the size of a twin, and with the walls of the bunk surrounding them, too, the space quickly began to feel hot as the passion between them flourished. Jack tugged gently on her hair, her head slightly tipping up to grant him access to the slender column of her neck, and his lips lightly grazed across her sensitive skin on their way down to her chest.

“ _Oh my god_ ,” Ally breathed. He kissed the bump of her exposed collarbone and dropped his lips into the low neck of her black top, her breasts already spilling out over the top of her shirt. A light sheen of sweat was beginning to form across her skin, but that didn’t stop him.

Ally swept her hand into his hair, holding it back, and Jack kept her clothes intact as his tongue licked over the curve of one breast, dipped into her cleavage, and traveled across the top of the other. Ally slung a leopard-printed leg over his hip, and he pulled her phone out of her back pocket, replacing it with his hand. He rolled slightly, trying to bring her on top of him as his lips worked the part of her breasts he could reach. She instinctively felt for the bunk’s ceiling, hoping to avoid an accidental impact, and he changed course, laying her back down beside him. Jack ran his fingertips sensually down the back of her neck along her spine, and goose bumps began to form on her arms, despite the heat surrounding them.

He left her chest for her neck then, and Ally felt it in her stomach as his lips tickled and sucked on her skin. Her head fell back in delight, and she hitched her leg up tighter around his hip. He moved higher, his teeth grazing her jawline, and found the spot behind her ear that he knew made her weak with pleasure.  She managed, after a few moments of bliss, to cup his face and pull him away. He looked up at her quizzically.

“Don’t you _dare_ leave a mark on me before the show,” she whispered, her voice serious.

“Your hair’ll cover it,” he mumbled.

“ _Jackson_.”

Jack leaned up and kissed her lips. “Okay, I won’t; I promise. Do you want me to stop?”

“No, you make me feel so good,” she breathed. “Just be careful.”

His lips returned to her skin, the sucking giving way to tender kisses and small licks to the spots he knew rendered her speechless. He held her a little tighter as she writhed in his arms, and his hand left her ass in favor of cupping her breast. Jack positioned one of his fingertips over her nipple and teased her through her clothes, squeezing her in time with his kisses. Ally tried to remain silent, tried to remember how _mortified_ she’d be if one of the stagehands heard her moaning in pleasure, and when she felt more than a small mewling threaten to escape her throat, she grabbed his face, pulling his mouth back up to meet hers. His hand remained on her chest, and Ally began slowly moving her hips, grinding herself into his body while they made out, hoping to relieve a little bit of the overwhelming ache that had settled between her legs.

When he moved his hand up to hold her face, Ally’s left his, reaching between them to tug at his shirt. He took her with him as he shifted, never breaking their kiss, and allowed her to push the fabric up to his chest. One hand slid up his abdomen, her fingers sinking into the soft hair, and the other curled around his back, ducking beneath his clothes. Jack began to meet her hips’ movements as Ally tantalizingly drug her nails down his bare skin. The added pressure against her made her lose her rhythm for a moment, but then she clutched his side and kissed him harder, her body moving faster. Her fingernails dug into his skin, and he lovingly caressed her cheek as a kiss came to its end.

“Do you want to come?” he whispered against her lips.

“I…” Ally stuttered, halting her actions. She hadn’t been thinking, really, her hips rubbing herself against him of their own volition. She glanced behind her and looked at the thin curtain that served as their only form of privacy on the open bus. “The bus is wide open!” she hissed.

“Nobody knows we’re in here,” Jack reminded her. He bucked his hips against her, and she ducked her head into the curve of his neck, suppressing a moan. “Is that what you want?” he asked again, his voice clearly an offer.

She sighed, hot and heavy against his skin, her face still buried. She pulled her head back up to meet his eyes and found them sparkling with lust and affection. Ally nodded, and his gaze dropped as he unbuttoned her pants with one hand. He pulled the zipper down, too, and she instinctively glanced at the curtain again.

“ _Jack_ ,” she warned. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting him to do after she granted him permission to continue; all she knew was that she _really_ didn’t want anybody to unknowingly pull back the curtain and find her naked in that bunk bed.

“ _Relax_ ,” he whispered, as if he knew what she was thinking. “I’m not taking anything off.”

True to his word, he simply slipped a hand beneath her clothes and curved it around her ass. He squeezed her playfully before pulling her _hard_ against him, helping her move as his other hand returned to her hair. Ally couldn’t remember the last time a man was content to fool around without trying to undress her as quickly as possible, but she could feel Jack growing harder through their clothes, and he returned to her mouth, kissing her slow and sexy again, and she knew he was feeling good, too. The hand in her pants slipped down a little further, the tips of his fingers just barely brushing against her center as they rocked together.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Ally whispered, and Jack smiled against her lips.

Eventually, Ally reached behind her back and grabbed his hand in frustration. She pulled it around to the front of her body and placed him low on her stomach, the layers of clothes between them too much to get her there from what they were doing alone. Jack got the message and slipped his hand into the front of her panties instead as she curled hers around his face. His fingertips were already slick with her arousal, and a wave of satisfaction washed over her as soon as she felt his touch where she needed it most. He rubbed circles against her, his eyes studying her reactions, and she shuddered, meeting his strokes with the movement of her hips. After a few moments of gentle touching, he slid his hand down to find her entrance, and her breath hitched in a loud but strangled moan as he easily glided two fingers inside of her.

“ _Shhh…_ ” he whispered against her lips. She nodded, her nose brushing against his. She held onto him as she began to rock again. “There you go,” he encouraged.

“It’s so hot in here,” she breathed, her eyes closed. Her lips barely opened as she muttered the words, her mind hazy. The sounds of Jack’s low chuckle met her ears.

“Just keep moving, baby,” he whispered.

His fingers slowly slipped in and out of her heat, and Ally reached between them again. She made quick work of his belt and jeans and smoothed her hand over his erection before slipping inside of his boxers. Her small hand wrapped around his hard length, and their lips met again. They worked each other using only their hands as they kissed, and she swallowed his groans when her thumb swirled around his head with every other stroke.

The tension in her belly began to build, and she reluctantly let him go in favor of grasping at his shoulder for a bit of stability. Ally sighed and moved her hips faster, fucking herself on his fingers. Jack slipped his thumb up to rub against her clit with every rock back and forth; he immediately felt her flutter around him.

“You close?” he whispered.

“Don’t fucking stop,” she commanded.

He gently bit her bottom lip and increased the pressure beneath his thumb, and that was all it took for her to come, her body stilling as her mouth opened on a silent moan. She tightened her grip on his shoulder and arched into him again, and even with her eyes closed, she knew Jack was watching her fall apart. Jack continued to tenderly move his fingers inside of her, his pace slowed to a soft caress, and her body trembled with the aftershocks of her orgasm. When she couldn’t take it anymore, she grabbed his wrist.

“Okay, you gotta…” she whispered, fighting to catch her breath. “You gotta stop. I can’t…”

He pulled his hand from her pants and sucked his own fingers into his mouth, closing his eyes as her taste assaulted his tongue. She looked at him, feeling spineless but satisfied, and he placed small kisses on her forehead. She tilted her head up, her tongue sweeping into his mouth as her hand traveled back down his body.

“Hey,” he whispered as she slowly began stroking him again, her strength not quite returned. “You don’t have to; I can take care of it.”

“Why?” she asked instantly. She swiveled her hand on her next stroke and smirked a little as his eyes instantly closed, his head tilted back in a silent prayer to stay quiet. Ally placed her lips against his neck and whispered, “Let me do this for you.”

Jack rolled onto his back, opening his arm for Ally to curl into his side, and closed his eyes. She smiled as the same peace from before settled on his face, and though he didn’t know it, she kept her eyes on his face as she finished him off, admiring him in the way she sometimes caught him admiring her. He breathed out a moan and opened one eye.

“What?” he asked as he caught a glimpse of the loving expression on her face.

Ally shook her head a little and, with a shrug, whispered, “Maybe I just think _you’re_ beautiful.”

Jack chuckled. “Shit,” he muttered, looking around the bunk for something to clean up with. Ally sat up as best she could in the small space and grabbed the discarded sheet bunched beneath their feet.

“Nobody sleeps in here anyway,” she argued when she caught the look he was giving her.

Jack tossed the sheet back into the corner of the bunk when they were through with it, and she placed her hand over her mouth to stifle the giggles bubbling up inside of her. Everyone was looking for him (and now maybe her, too) and there they were, hiding in a bunk bed barely big enough for one, their hair horribly disheveled, their clothes messy, fooling around like they were in the backseat of his truck at a drive-in movie. He looked over at her again and nearly started laughing himself.

“What?” he asked again. Instead of answering him, Ally curled her hands around his face and leaned in to place quick kisses on his lips. “Come here,” he whispered, pulling her in.

She laid down in the curve of his shoulder and curled her leg around his. Jack stroked the part of her back he could reach with the arm wrapped around her, and they spent a few minutes simply cuddling together. When Ally felt his breathing begin to change, she opened her eyes, sat back up, and lightly slapped his chest with her hand.

“Oh, no,” she said. “You are not fucking going back to sleep.”

“ _Fuck_ , woman, what do you expect after that?” he protested.

“We have to go play a show,” she reminded him. Jack groaned again and rolled onto his side, reaching for her hips.

“Fine,” he muttered as he buttoned her pants back up.

“Hey,” she whispered. Jack’s eyes met hers. “Why’d you drink so much today?” She knew who he was; she’d known since their very first night together when she watched him throw back an alarming amount of alcohol at the cop bar. The action wasn’t unusual; the timing was, at least a little. When he didn’t answer, she said, “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he finally muttered. “I just…can’t help it sometimes. I didn’t realize how much…I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered. She leaned in and kissed his mouth. “It’s okay.”

“We should go,” he murmured.

“For the record,” Ally said with a cheeky grin. “What just happened here…that is not why I got in here with you.”

“I know,” Jack muttered, returning her smile. “I’m glad you did.”

“Yeah, that was fun,” Ally breathed with another small giggle.

“I’ll see you out there,” he promised.

“Okay,” she replied.

Ally pulled back the curtain, and he held her as she carefully slid out of the bunk. Her hands went to her hair, fussing with it, knowing his hands had left it a mess, and she watched, making sure he followed her out. He fastened his pants as his feet hit the ground and headed to the bathroom. She headed outside, sighing as fresh air filled her lungs and the cool breeze bathed her heated skin. She needed to find Gail, let her know she could call off the search party.

She’d just have to force the stupid smile off her face first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for reading & thoughts are always appreciated!


	6. Carnival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the long wait between chapters! This one is actually the first idea I had for this collection...so naturally, it was the hardest to figure out what to actually do with.

A large passenger van rolled down the road, carrying Jack, Ally, and the band from their hotel to the fairground amphitheater that would be their home for the next two nights. The month-long, midwestern state fair featured a series of concerts every Friday and Saturday night for the duration of the event, and Jack had been invited to headline the inaugural weekend. The band sat in the back of the van, checking their phones and checking in with loved ones back at home, while Jack and Ally sat side-by-side in a comfortable silence in the middle row. The carnival came into view as they got closer to the fairgrounds, the colorful structures piercing the clear, blue sky in the distance, and Ally watched as the rides seemed to catch Jack’s attention, his head leaning towards the window to get a better look.

Ally slid over on the van seat until she was right up against his side. She curled her arm around his back, placed a hand on his shoulder, and rested her chin against it. “Do you want to go to the carnival?” she asked with a grin.

He looked the part of the hardened rock star; nobody could deny that, but Ally knew he had a boyish side to him, too. She saw it every time he leaned in to brush her nose with his while they were singing, every time he let her pull him off the couch on the bus to dance with her, and every time he turned a caress against her bare skin into tickling instead. It wasn’t a side of Jack that showed itself often, but it was a part of him that she thoroughly enjoyed indulging, if only to see the full-face smile that often came with it.

Jack glanced at her out of the corner of his eye for a moment before he said, with a scoff, “We can’t.”

“Sure we can,” Ally argued. “We have all afternoon tomorrow; it’s not just for kids.”

Jack’s lips curled into a little grin at her misunderstanding and said, “No, it’s…it’s just not really possible.” Ally glanced up at him from her place on his shoulder and narrowed her eyes slightly. “We’d get mobbed, Ally,” he clarified.

“Oh,” Ally said, her face falling. She leaned back into her own seat, sitting up straight as her hands dropped to her lap. “I hadn’t really thought of that.” Jack didn’t say anything else; he simply kept watching her out of the corner of his eye, and she added, with a self-deprecating laugh, “I think sometimes I forget who you are now.”

Jack grinned and slung his arm across the back of the seat behind her. With a gentle nudge to her shoulder, he pulled her back into his side. In a teasing tone, he asked, “I’m not _Jackson Maine_ anymore, huh?”

And the truth was, he wasn’t. The truth was, he hadn’t been for a while.

She’d been recognized by herself a few times throughout the weeks she’d spent with him – in hotel lobbies, after shows, at various restaurants on the road with Jack. She’d posed for pictures, signed a few tour posters, and watched her follower count on Instagram rise to a daunting number, but she hadn’t experienced anything on her own that truly felt disruptive to life as she knew it. She didn’t feel like she couldn’t go out if she wanted to; she didn’t feel like she needed to cancel her secret plan to run off to the carnival grounds to get something that definitely shouldn’t ever be fried to eat backstage before the show, and she didn’t feel like she needed to take a security guard with her, either. It was crazy, she thought, how easily she could forget it wasn’t like that for him, too. She might have become a little recognizable, in the right place, among the right crowd, but he was _famous_ , and despite the fact that she had spent a large portion of the time they spent together that first night in the parking lot wondering how he lived with the loss of anonymity that came with that, how he let everything seemingly just roll off his back, the truth was, it hadn’t taken long at all for him to stop being _Jackson Maine_.

It helped, she supposed, that she was never too starstruck around him to begin with. Surprised to find him watching her perform, yes, and intimidated by the fact that he wanted to talk to her afterwards, sure, but the kind of starstruck she’d witnessed during her time on tour with him, the kind that seemed to render people unable to form coherent thoughts or keep their composure in his presence – that wasn’t her. That hadn’t stopped her in the beginning from being very aware of just _who_ was talking to her, _who_ was grasping her face and kissing her lips, _who_ was sitting at the foot of her bed in her father’s home, asking her to come away with him, but somewhere along the way – and, she realized, she couldn’t exactly point out when – she’d stopped thinking about who he was every time she looked at him or every time he touched her.

Somewhere along the way, he’d become who he’d wanted her to see him as from the very beginning. He wasn’t Jackson Maine; he was just Jack.

“No,” she said honestly. “You’re just…I mean, the concerts and the fans and stuff, that’s unusual, but when the shows are over, you’re just…you’re just my boyfriend, you know? It’s just so… _normal_. I forget you can’t always be normal.”

Jack dipped his head to place a kiss on her lips. “I just can’t have you out there hittin’ people before the show, that’s all,” he teased.

Ally scoffed. “You’re never gonna let me forget that, are you?”

A wicked laugh escaped his lips. “Fuck no, I’m not.”

Ally nodded towards the carnival rides outside of the van window and, with a sigh, softly said, “But you want to go. I can tell.”

Jack shrugged and withdrew his arm from around her shoulders. He dropped it back into his lap, and Ally reached for it instantly, surrounding his hand with both of hers. “I just never really got to do things like that, you know? When I was a kid and stuff…” he said. “Dad wasn’t really…and my brother spent most of my life out trying to have his own fucking life until Dad died, so there wasn’t really anyone around to take me to things like that.”  

Ally looked at him sadly, knowing all along that what he’d just said was true but still feeling his words twist in her heart as he said them out loud. A sudden wish for the ability to hug her father overcame her in that moment, too, as she pictured Jack’s childhood in her head. Her father might have been lacking in money at times while she was growing up, but stories like that, from Jack or anyone else, really, always made her realize that while they couldn’t afford some of the fancy things her classmates had, her father had somehow made sure that she never really lacked in experiences.

She wasn’t quite sure how to respond in words to what Jack shared with her, so Ally laced their fingers together and leaned into his side again, laying her head on his shoulder.

“Maybe we can work something out,” she said softly.

Jack chuckled in a way that told her he was simply humoring her and muttered, “Sure.”

 

After the conclusion of Saturday night’s show, while only the last, lingering audience members remained in the field, a blonde woman dressed in a bohemian-style dress and pink cowboy boots ran up behind Ally while Jack’s crew carefully broke down the stage and got the instruments ready to travel again.

“Hey!” she said, grasping Ally’s shoulders from behind. “Great show tonight.”

“Thanks; you, too,” Ally said with a smile.

“You ready?” the other woman asked.

Ally grinned and glanced at Jack briefly before turning back to her new friend. “I haven’t told him yet,” she admitted.

“Well, hurry up! We don’t have all night,” she reminded her. “I’ll see you over there, okay?”

“Okay, yeah,” Ally said with another grin.

“Tell me what?” Jack asked as the other woman walked away, his curiosity peaked. Ally’s grin turned mischievous as she wordlessly slipped her hand into his and started pulling him off the stage and towards the fairgrounds. Jack pulled back, halting their steps. “What are you doing?”

“ _We_ are going to go ride the Ferris Wheel and the swings and one of those Himalaya things that’ll spin us so fast, we’ll throw up,” Ally told him with authority, as if he had no choice in the matter.

“Ally,” he muttered, dropping her hand. “I already told you we can’t; besides, it’s fucking closed.”

“Not for us…” she teased.

“What does that mean?” Jack asked.

“It means maybe you’re not the only one with a little bit of pull around here, _Jackson Maine_.”

Jack chuckled. “There goes the full name again,” he said.

“ _Yup_ ,” Ally said with a smile, popping her lips on the ‘p.’

“What did you do?” he asked.

She shrugged as if it were no big deal, really, and said, “I was talking to Kara, you know, the singer who was on before us this weekend.” She gestured away from the stage, referring to the woman who’d just come to find her. “And she said the same thing, that it sucks because it’s summer, and her kids are with her now while they’re not in school, and they have to go to the carnival with the nanny instead of her because she can’t just wander around like that, and that’s not fair, to her or the kids _or to you_ , so we got together yesterday and found the organizer and just…kinda…asked nicely.”

A disbelieving laugh escaped Jack’s throat. “You _asked nicely_ , and they gave you after-hours time?” he clarified.

“Yeah,” Ally said. “Well…one hour. And not everything’s staying open; the games and stuff are closed, and I think some of the food is, too, and it’ll be over before we know it because an hour’s hardly anything, but it’s an hour, and you just…you do so much for me, I thought this was something I could try to do for you.”

Jack chuckled again and reached for her, pulling her into his body for a hug. “You’re amazing,” he muttered into her hair.

“Hey, Ally?” Lukas said from the stage. Ally spun out of Jack’s embrace to face him. “Is that hour just for him?”

“No,” Ally said with a laugh. “It’s for everyone.” She turned back to Jack and held out her hands. “Well? What do you think?”

Jack took one of her hands in hers again and said, “Let’s go.”

 

A little over an hour later, as the remaining carnival lights disappeared behind them, Jack and Ally made their way to the tour buses parked in the fairground’s expansive parking lot. Jack’s arm was haphazardly slung across Ally’s shoulders; Ally held him tightly with one of her arms while a giant bag of kettle corn dangled from her other hand. She felt more of his weight fall against her body as he tried to lean on her – no small feat with Ally in flats and Jack nearly a foot taller than her – and she briefly wondered to herself if he was staggering from exhaustion or if he was staggering because the carnival rides didn’t mix well with the pills she saw him covertly slip into his mouth before the show.

Jack stumbled a little, pushing her to the side, too, and Ally laughed as she caught her balance enough to keep both of them upright. “You okay, cowboy?” she asked, clutching his side a little bit tighter.

“You’re tryn’a kill me,” Jack muttered. She had run him all over the fairgrounds at an impressive rate, hitting as much as she could in the precious hour of time they’d been granted. “ Running around to all the rides like that after a whole fucking show…we’re not all so young anymore, you know.”

“You loved it,” she said. The mischievous grin from before returned to her face as she said, “And I have a picture of you beaming on a carousel horse to prove it.”

“You gotta delete that,” Jack said.

“ _Never_ ,” Ally said with a grin.

“You better not put that on fucking Instagram or something,” he said.

Ally shook her head. “That’s just for me,” she promised. “Seriously, though, you had a good time?”

Jack nodded. “I think it might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me,” he said honestly.  

Ally let out an audible, almost pained breath as she felt that in her heart, too. She stopped walking, bringing Jack to a halt, and when he glanced over at her to see what had happened, the emotional look on her face softened as she whispered, “Come here,” and slid the arm around his back up his chest to hold his face in her palm.

She stretched onto the tips of her toes as she softly touched her lips to his. He pulled her in, her body pressed flush against his, and they shared gentle kisses, one after another, beneath the stars peeking out behind the clouds in the sky. Their lips remained entwined until a startling rumble of thunder from a brewing summer storm broke them apart.

“Shit,” Jack said, glancing up.

From the safety of Jack’s strong embrace, Ally looked up at him and whispered, “Hey.” Jack looked down at her and let his forehead fall against hers. They breathed each other in for a moment before Ally asked, “You’re with me, right?”

Knowing that was her way of asking if he was sober enough for a serious conversation, Jack replied, “Yeah, I’m with you.”

“Is it worth it?” Ally asked.

“Is what worth it?” he asked.

“The music, you know…being a musician, doing what you do…is it worth giving up things like this, not being able to…to just _be_?”

“Are you having second thoughts about all this?” Jack asked.

“No, not really, I just…delivery people take pictures of you while you’re signing receipts in our hotel doorways, and videos you didn’t even know were being taken of you just walking down a street pop up online, and you can’t do normal things like ride some rides at a carnival without having to ask for – and be granted – special treatment, and I still just honestly don’t know how the hell you deal with that, and I think, if I stick with you, that might end up being my life, too, so I’m just…wondering,” Ally explained. “So is it?”

Jack thought about it for a minute, another clap of thunder drawing his attention back to the sky as he snuggled Ally a little closer in his arms. “I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t worth it,” he finally said. “I think it’s a fucking compulsion sometimes,” he added with a laugh. “Writing music. You know how that is.” Ally nodded, a grin teasing the edges of her own lips. “But I didn’t have to do it like this. That could’ve just been a hobby or something…could’ve played in bars in Arizona. There were other ways I could’ve spent my life.”

“Like how?” Ally asked with a smile, genuinely curious as to what else he might’ve considered.

“Shit, I don’t know,” Jack replied. “Only thing I’ve ever really been able to do is play the guitar. But having people who actually want to hear what I have to say, having a platform to actually say it on…that’s the stuff right there. That makes it worth it. Does that answer your question?”

Ally nodded. “Yeah,” she confirmed.

Jack reached up and brushed some loose hair out of her eyes. “Is it all gettin’ to be too much?” he asked carefully. “I know we don’t go out much…”

“That’s okay,” Ally said quickly, cutting off that line of thinking before it could really begin. “I love our hotel dates.”

“So it’s not gonna…this isn’t gonna scare you away?” he asked, a hint of fear in his voice.

“Has that scared people away from you before?” Ally asked, softly stroking his cheek with her thumb.

Jack shrugged and said, “One or two.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she promised. “I just want to know what you’re getting me into.”

“What _I’m_ getting you into?” he asked. “You’re getting yourself into this with that voice.” Ally laughed, and Jack continued, “Fucking powerhouse; I couldn’t leave you singing in that bar.”

“Oh, shut up,” Ally said lightheartedly, moving in for another kiss.

Jack obliged, their kisses a bit more playful, a bit more urgent than the kisses they’d shared before.  When the thunder in the sky finally turned into a light rain that showered down on them as they kissed, Jack moved back with a groan, drawing another chuckle out of Ally.

“Come on,” she said, slipping her hand into his. “Let’s get you back to the bus before you melt; they’re probably already mad about the late departure anyway.”

Ally started walking towards the parking lot again, her arm stretching out behind her as Jack stayed behind. When she finally met some resistance, she turned around to find him, wet strands of hair already beginning to stick to both of their faces.

“They’ll live,” Jack said, referring to the possibly disgruntled bus drivers, and he pulled her back in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone out there who's still reading! Feedback's always appreciated :)


	7. Restless

It was just like old times, Jack thought, as the bus rolled down the highway, the only sound in the cabin coming from the rumbling of the asphalt underneath the large tires. Halfway into a six-pack, he laid alone on the couch, passing the time with the bottle in his hand, the phone at his side, and the occasional glance out the window. Ally was in the back, but he hadn’t seen her in hours. Not since he’d decided to just walk away.

When he finally heard the click of the bedroom door from the back of the bus, unmistakable in the silence, Jack resisted the urge to look behind his shoulder. He knew she’d have to come out eventually, but after the morning they’d had, he assumed it would be for a necessity, like food or the bathroom. He still didn’t really expect to see her, but her footsteps didn’t stop at the bathroom or the kitchen area and continued towards the front of the cabin, towards him, instead. Without moving his head, Jack rolled his eyes up to look at her as she came into view.

She stopped about halfway down his body in front of the couch, eyes downcast, arms encased in a baggy sweater and crossed against her chest, as if someone was making her stand there instead of her being there of her own volition. After a moment, she let out a breath and folded her legs beneath her as she sat down on the floor next to the couch, and the look on her face shifted from defiance to defeat.

Jack pushed himself up so he was reclining against the arm rest instead of laying flat on his back. He kept his eyes on her, watching her, waiting for her to speak. When she didn’t say anything – and didn’t seem inclined to actually say anything any time soon – he held out his half-empty bottle of beer, dangling it down in her line of vision as she played with the wrists on her sweater. Her hands stilled and her lips curled into the smallest of grins at the understood peace offering, and she grabbed the bottle, taking a drink before handing it back to him.

“I’m sorry,” she finally said, her voice small.

“You don’t have to apologize,” Jack said, finishing off the beer.

“Yes, I do. I sounded like an ungrateful bitch, and that’s, like…the opposite of what I am,” Ally said, finally looking at him. “The ungrateful part. I’m definitely still a fucking bitch.”

“You’re restless,” Jack said. “It’s okay.”

“I’m just having a day where I miss, like, everything,” she said. “My dad and my room and Ramon and the girls at the bar and a shower that has hot water for more than five minutes and being stationary for more than five minutes, and just…fucking _everything_.”

Jack took a breath at the length of her list and said, “We’re going home for a little break soon.”

Ally sighed. “I know.”

“Do you need to go now?” he asked sincerely.

“No,” Ally said with a shake of her head, her eyes drifting back down to her sleeves.

“It’s okay if you do; I’m the only one who has to be here,” Jack said.

“I don’t wanna miss anything,” she insisted. “It’s just a mood. It’ll pass.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yeah, if I went home early, I’d just end up missing all of _this_ ,” she said. Jack chuckled at that, and Ally continued, “We just…we haven’t been off the bus for more than a few hours lately, and I think it’s getting to me. I feel, like, trapped or something; I don’t know, but when I feel like that, I can get mean.”

“This bus is fucking suffocating sometimes,” Jack agreed. “Why do you think I run off on the bike every chance I get?”

“So what do you do when it gets busy like this, and you can’t?” she asked.

Jack wordlessly grabbed his phone, found what he was looking for in his email, and passed the device to Ally. She took it out of his hands and stared at it for a minute, scrolling up and down a few times.

“What’s this?” she asked, her brow furrowed.

“Well, that’s a hotel room,” he said. “Or it will be after tomorrow’s show.”

“But…how?” she asked.

“We’ve got a few days before the next one,” he said.

“But we’re supposed to be driving,” she reminded him. “We can’t do this and get there on the bike.”

“So we’ll take the plane to the next show,” Jack said with a shrug. Ally looked up at him incredulously, and he chuckled again. “Ally, that’s what it’s there for.”

“But…I…” Ally stuttered.

“You’re right,” he said, taking the phone back out of her hands. “It’s been too long since we got off this thing for a few days.”

“Are you sure that’s okay?” she asked.

“Why not?” Jack asked. “Oh, it’s like a hotel and spa place, so I booked you a couple things. I just kinda guessed at what you might like, but we can cancel anything you don’t want to do.”

“You…” Ally started. A disbelieving sigh escaped her throat as her face crumbled.

“Hey, no… _fuck_. Why are you crying?” he asked, sitting up further in concern.

“Because I was a fucking bitch to you, and you’re rewarding me with hotel suites and spa treatments!” Ally exclaimed, laughing through the tears welling up in her eyes. The small voice returned as she gestured to his phone and said, “I don’t deserve any of that.”

“Hey,” Jack said, leaning over the side of the couch to get nearer to her. “I know you didn’t mean what you said this morning.”

“Can’t you just be mad at me a little, huh?” she asked.

“Would that make you feel better?” he asked.

“ _Yes_ ,” she replied.

“Well, sorry, I’ve had a couple hours to get over it,” he teased. Ally audibly exhaled and covered her face with her hands, suddenly embarrassed by the fact that she’d kept herself locked in the bedroom that long. Jack wrapped his hand around one of her forearms and tugged lightly. “Get up here,” he said.

 

The following night, when the show ended, Jack grabbed a full bottle of gin from backstage and called a car for himself and Ally, forgoing the usual post-show festivities in favor of beginning their mini-vacation at the luxurious hotel and spa. He headed into the lobby with his guitar case in one hand and a rolling suitcase in the other. Ally followed a half-step behind him, her bag slung across her body, her high ponytail bouncing as they walked. He looked back at her with a small grin as they approached the front desk, and she smiled widely at him. She knew he was going to stress her out as soon as it came time to leave the hotel – he’d somehow convince her it was okay to stay intertwined in bed just a little bit longer, they’d cut it too close, they’d _barely_ make it to the next show – but in that moment, she was simply happy to find herself walking into a place that took more than 20 steps to traverse and didn’t have wheels underneath her bedroom.

“Hey,” Jack said with a nod as they approached the front desk. The young man sitting behind it stood up and pulled the earbuds out of his ears. “Sorry we’re gettin’ here so late.”

“That’s okay,” the man said. “Somebody’s here all night. Checking in?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. He set his stuff down on the floor, and Ally folded her arms against the desk beside him, leaning against it slightly as the adrenaline from the show began to wear off. “Got a reservation,” he said. “Name’s Jack Campana.”

He’d obviously had a reason to put the room under that name, she knew, so Ally hoped she didn’t give it away as she quickly turned her head to look at him, surprise evident on her face. Jack glanced at her again out of the corner of his eye, almost as if he were expecting that reaction, and the same little grin from before returned to his face.

“Okay, looks like you’re all paid, so all we need is an ID,” the front desk clerk said.

Ally raised her eyebrow slightly, wondering what he was going to do about handing over an ID that didn’t match. She suppressed a laugh at the show Jackson proceeded to put on then, acting like he didn’t have his wallet when she knew for a fact it was tucked into the front pocket of the rolling luggage. She’d never pictured him as much of an actor, but he made it look real, patting down each pocket on his jeans and shirt as if he were looking for it. The fact that the kid behind the desk couldn’t be older than twenty and clearly had no idea who he was made the entire spectacle even better.

“Shit,” he finally muttered. “I must’ve left it on the bus. Will you take hers?” He nodded towards Ally.

“Sure,” the clerk agreed with a shrug.

“Give ‘em yours,” Jack said to Ally with a nod.

Ally slowly slid her bag over her head, eyeing him strangely as she pulled it open. She fished out her own wallet and handed over her ID, keeping her gaze on Jackson as the clerk entered in the information he needed to finish checking them in.

“Okay, Mr. and Mrs. Campana, you’re all set,” he said, passing over a folded envelope with two key cards inside. “Room 417. Keys and WiFi information are in there, and the elevators are directly behind you and to the right.”

“Thanks,” Ally said with a friendly smile.

“Enjoy your stay,” he said.

Jack gathered the stuff he had dropped as Ally slung her bag back across her body. They started heading for the elevators, and, as soon as they were out of earshot, Ally glanced over at him with an amused grin and asked, “Are you taking my name now?”

An awkward laugh escaped Jack’s throat as he momentarily looked down at the ground. “Sorry about that. I should’ve told you,” he said. “Do you have any idea how often people just hang up on me when I give my name for something like that?”

“Really?” Ally asked.

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Probably…fucking thirty or forty other Jackson Maines in this country, but as soon as they hear it in my voice, they think I’m some kid trying to prank ‘em. Didn’t think anyone would question your name.”

“You could’ve just used _my_ name,” Ally pointed out, as she reached over to call the elevator.

Jack laughed awkwardly again. “Hadn’t even thought of that,” he admitted. He put on a puckish grin and teased, “Jackson Campana doesn’t sound so bad, though, does it?”

As the elevator arrived, Ally shrugged. “Neither does Ally Maine,” she said casually, stepping inside. She turned to press the number for their floor and found Jack still standing in the lobby, momentarily frozen in place with a bit of a dumbfounded look on his face. She laughed; he couldn’t even take his own joke. “You comin’?” she asked.

 

Jack opened the door and flipped the lights on, stepping aside and keeping an arm against the open door to let Ally inside the suite first. Ally’s mouth dropped a little as she took in the size of what would be their home for the next few days. It was even larger than the first one he’d ever taken her to in California.

“ _Jackson_ ,” she breathed as she slowly walked inside. She pulled her bag over her head and let it fall from her hands at the end of the entryway.

“What?” he asked.

He didn’t receive an answer as she disappeared from sight, checking out the rest of the suite. He brought the rest of their things in and locked the door behind them, and a faint gasp carried from the other room.

“Oh my god, there’s a jacuzzi bathtub in here!” she called.

“Is that good?” he called back with a laugh.

“That’s awesome!” she replied. She headed back towards the entryway and said, “This is too much.”

“It’s not too much,” Jack replied.

“It’s like an _apartment_ ,” she said with a laugh. She frowned and said, “This is actually _bigger_ than my old apartment.”

“But do you like it?” he asked.

She ran back towards the door, stopping directly in front of him. “I love it,” she said. She gripped the edges of his button-down shirt, ginned, and added, “Thank you, Mr. Campana.”

Jack laughed and said, “I don’t know what we’re gonna do when we can’t use your name anymore, either. Guess it’s a good thing I only call you Ally on stage.”

As Ally laughed, too, Jack slid his hand around her body until he found the small of her back and pulled her in for a kiss. Her laugh turned into a soft moan against his lips, and she slid both of her arms around his shoulders, pushing herself up onto her toes to deepen their embrace. Jack leaned in, too, his arms consuming her small body, and slipped a hand into her back pocket as they wrapped themselves up in each other. Without words, they began to slowly move towards the bedroom, leaving their bags forgotten by the door.

 

Ally returned to their suite the following afternoon, wearing a hotel robe and flip flops, her hair hanging loose around her shoulders. She grinned as she spotted Jack on the couch, his guitar resting against the arm of the furniture while he manipulated the video game controller in his hand instead.

“Hey,” she said when she realized he hadn’t heard her come in.

“Hey,” he replied, not looking up from the TV. “How was the spa?”

“It was great,” she said. She kicked her shoes off and made her way over to the couch. “What are you doing? I didn’t know you played video games.”

“I don’t,” he muttered. “Nothing was coming to me with the guitar, you know, and the game console was there…found some stuff on Pay-Per-View. Thought I’d give it a try.”

“How’re you doing?” She curled a leg beneath her and sat down sideways on the couch, facing him.

“I think I need to fucking stick to the guitar,” Jack laughed.

Ally chuckled and crawled towards him, breaking his hold on the game controller as she grabbed his shoulders and swung one leg over his lap to straddle him. Jack willingly let the controller fall onto the couch beside them, his hands coming to rest on Ally’s hips instead. She leaned in and kissed him slowly, and her hands tangled into his hair as he opened his mouth beneath hers. An explosion rang out in the background, signaling the death of his character in the abandoned video game, but Ally didn’t miss a beat as she pushed him back against the couch without separating their lips, stretching her body over his to continue their kiss. She didn’t take control like that often, but he sure as hell loved it when she did, so instead of interrupting her to grab the remote and stop the stalled game from becoming the soundtrack to their afternoon, he tilted his head back and slid his hands up her body.

Ally shifted back onto his thighs as she continued to kiss him. One of her hands left his hair and caressed down his face before landing on the front of his jeans. She pulled at the button and zipper with nimble fingers and slipped her hand inside. He felt himself begin to harden beneath her touch as she gently cupped him through the thin fabric, and she pulled out of their kiss slowly. Jack opened his eyes to find hers sparkling as she gazed down at him. Her slightly-swollen lips curved into a wicked grin when she caught him looking at her, and she let him go, sliding down to her knees on the floor between his legs.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice strangled.

“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m doing,” she said, using both hands to tug at his clothes. “Come on, help me.”

Jack lifted his hips and helped her push his jeans and underwear down to his knees. She took him into her hand and began stroking him as he wondered, “What’d they do to you in that spa?”

“ _Shhh_ ,” Ally replied with a small chuckle.

He groaned as she leaned in and slipped his dick into her warm mouth. The hand wrapped around him stilled but held him steady as she kissed and sucked just the tip of him softly. The sight alone of Ally’s lips enveloped around him was enough to drive him wild, but when she glanced up at him, meeting his eyes with hers without letting him fall from her lips, he knew that could be his undoing.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” he sighed. His head fell backwards against the back of the couch while she let hers fall forward, taking more of him into her mouth.

He thread his fingers into her hair, not to guide her or to push her down further, but just to hold her hair back, just to tell her that what she was doing felt fucking _incredible_ in a way that he couldn’t convey with words in that moment of ecstasy as Ally sucked him and stroked him until he was spent.

When she was through, she wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her robe and climbed back atop him as he recovered. His head had fallen back against the couch again, and his hands landed weakly on her thighs; she leaned forward, placing kisses up the exposed column of his neck. When she reached his jawline, he picked his head back up and caught her lips in a tender kiss.

“Good?” she asked quietly. He moved towards her, placing his ear closer to her lips, and she cupped his face with both her hands as she asked again, “Was that good?”

“You’re amazing,” he assured her. The sides of her robe had loosened around her chest, and he tucked his lips between them, placing a kiss on the bare skin between her breasts. One hand slipped beneath her robe and curved around her ass, his fingertips teasing underneath the elastic line on her panties. “Your turn?” he asked.

“Uh-uh,” Ally replied, shaking her head. “Just something I wanted to do for you.” She kissed him again and said, “I’m gonna go take a bath.”

“In the middle of the day?” Jack asked.

“Yeah,” Ally shrugged. She grinned and held her arms out to her sides as she said, “I’m not quite ready for the spa life to end.” He laughed lightly, and she asked, “Do you want to come?”

“Nah, you go ahead,” he said.

“Okay,” Ally said. With one last kiss, she climbed off him and said, “I’ll be out soon.”

Jack pulled his boxers back into place as she headed for the bathroom, choosing to kick his jeans off instead, leaving them in a crumpled pile beneath his feet. He grabbed the remote, silently admitted he was a lost cause, and switched the picture source from the game console to the television, clicking through the channels to see what he could find to occupy himself until dinner. After a few minutes, the running water in the bathroom cut off, and he turned his head to look in that direction.

By the time he pushed the cracked door open and slipped inside, Ally had made herself comfortable in the tub with the jacuzzi jets on low, surrounding her body with small bubbles. Her eyes closed, she’d piled her dark hair atop her head, keeping it away from the water, and her arms were stretched up and folded, hands protecting the back of her head from the hard porcelain of the tub. She looked so blissful, Jack almost didn’t want to ruin it.

“Did you change your mind or are you just enjoying the view?” Ally asked slyly.

“What?” Jack asked, startled by her voice. He didn’t know she knew he’d walked in. Ally opened her eyes and briefly glanced down at her own naked body before returning her gaze to him. “I, uh…I changed my mind. Is that okay?”

Ally wordlessly sat up and slid forward, leaving room for Jack to slip into the tub behind her. He pulled the remainder of his clothes off and climbed in, encasing her between his legs.

“Shit, this feels good,” he muttered as the jacuzzi jets hit his skin and she fell back against him, her back hitting his chest.

“I told you,” she said, leaning her head back against his shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her, fully engulfing her in his embrace, and tilted his head down to kiss her neck from behind. Ally closed her eyes again and moaned softly.

“You’re happy, right?” he asked. “The other day…”

“Forget everything I said the other day, okay?” she asked. She looked at him as best she could and said, “Jack, I’m so happy, I could die.”

“Well, don’t do that,” he said with a grin. “I’d miss you too much.”

She closed her eyes again and buried her face in his neck with a smile as his arms tightened around her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please leave some feedback if you've got a moment :)


	8. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sooooo sorry for the ridiculous amount of time between updates here. I went to Vegas to see Lady Gaga shortly after the last post, and while vacation pretty much always kills my story momentum, I've had the *hardest* time getting back into writing ever since, so I'm hoping there are still a few of you out there reading!

“Hey guys,” Phil said from the driver’s seat as Ally and Jack climbed into the back of the SUV after walking off the private plane. “Welcome back.”

“Hi,” Ally breathed with a friendly smile, meeting Phil’s gaze in the rearview mirror as she slid all the way over to the passenger side of the vehicle. She dropped her bag at her feet as Jack pulled the door shut behind them. “Thanks for picking us up.”

“It’s what I’m here for,” Phil replied. “So whose house am I going to?”

“Mine, please,” Ally said without hesitation.

Jack, startled by the ease at which the answer had tumbled from her lips, immediately turned his head to look at her. They hadn’t talked about it, Jack realized then, when they’d talked about their time off. He had just – incorrectly, apparently – assumed she’d go home with him once they returned to Southern California. His eyes remained on her, but Ally didn’t feel his gaze as she reached for her seatbelt and fastened it into place.

“Do you need the address again?” Ally asked Phil.

“Nah, I got it in the history,” he promised, tapping the GPS next to him. He shifted the car into drive as soon as navigation started and pulled out of the Los Angeles airfield.

As Ally settled into her seat and swiped her finger across her phone screen to unlock the device, Jack finally asked, “You don’t want to come home with me?”

“What?” Ally said, her eyes quickly drifting from her screen to his face. He looked disheartened – wounded, almost. Ally never wanted to make his face look like that again. “Well…I…I just…” she stuttered, as surprised by his disappointment as he’d been over her request to go home. “Of course I do. I just…I kinda want to see my dad.”

“Right,” Jack muttered.

“It was just me and him for most of my life, you know, and we’ve never really been apart this long before,” Ally rapidly explained. “And I know we sound kind of chaotic sometimes or…you know, like, _all the time_ , but he’s…my dad.”

“I understand,” Jack said.

“I’m sorry,” Ally said sincerely. “I didn’t…”

“It’s okay,” he said.

“You didn’t say anything,” she said.

“Yeah,” Jack acknowledged.

“I just thought…” Ally started.

“Hey,” he said, dropping his hand onto one of her thighs. “You never have to be sorry for wanting to spend time with your dad, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” Ally said, not quite convinced he really meant that. She could still see hints of disappointment lingering in his eyes, so she switched gears, grinned, and said, “I do want to see your house, though.”

“There’s time,” he replied, his shoulders rising and falling in a half-hearted shrug.

“Tomorrow?” Ally asked. “I could stop by while Dad’s out driving, maybe.”

“How about I take you on a real date tomorrow night?” he asked.

“What do you mean, a real date?” Ally asked.

“You know, the whole…pick you up, nice dinner…” Jack began to explain. He stopped abruptly, shook his head, and said, “That’s stupid.”

“No!” Ally said quickly. Her face lit up a little as she said, “That’s not stupid.”

“I just thought…” Jack started. “Since we never really…”

“Yeah,” Ally agreed.

“I guess that first night…sort of,” Jack said.

Ally chuckled. “Not really,” she replied.

“So, I don’t know, it’s just something I thought about,” he said with another shrug.

“I _love_ that idea,” Ally assured him.

Jack’s hand remained on Ally’s leg while the couple chatted with Phil as they made their way to Ally’s house. When they arrived, Phil pulled as far off to the side of the road as he could. Ally leaned over to reach for her bag but stopped halfway, holding up a finger as she sat back up and looked towards Jack.

“Don’t tell me where we’re going,” she insisted. “Just let me know what to wear tomorrow, okay?”

“You don’t want a say?” Jack asked with a laugh.

“Surprise me,” Ally said. “Just pick a place where I can wear something pretty.”

“Well, you’re always pretty,” Jack muttered.

Ally smiled softly, her eyes falling into her own lap. She moved towards the middle of the backseat and gently touched her fingertips to his face, guiding it to meet hers for a kiss. She tucked his hair behind his ears and let her fingers lazily trace down his jawline as she pulled away. His lips followed hers, not quite ready to let her go.

“Bye, baby,” she said in a whisper barely loud enough for him to hear.

“Bye,” he replied as she grabbed her bag and hopped out of the car. Jack immediately slid across the seat as the door slammed shut behind Ally. He rolled the window down, just as he’d done the first time he dropped her off at home. “Hey,” he called.

Ally, still standing just outside the vehicle, turned around with a knowing smile, but before she could say anything, Lorenzo opened the front door of the house and made his way out onto the porch.

“There she is!” Lorenzo called, walking down the porch steps to meet the concrete walkway. “I thought I heard you pull up!”

Jack watched as Ally turned again – more abruptly this time – dropped her bag, and ran towards her father. Lorenzo caught her, lifted her off her feet, and spun her around so she was facing the road again as they embraced. Ally’s eyes met Jack’s over her father’s shoulder, and she sweetly waved to him before Lorenzo set her back down on the ground. Jack rolled the passenger window back up and slumped back into the seat, giving Phil a signal to drive.

“Remember when you thought you fucked that up?” Phil asked with a laugh.

“Yeah,” Jack replied solemnly as the car pulled away, leaving father and daughter laughing in the driveway behind him.

 

“I can’t believe he didn’t fire you for running out like that,” Ally said. She was sitting in the corner of the balcony at Ramon’s small apartment the following afternoon, one foot on the ground to keep her steady. Ramon slid the door shut behind him and passed her a can of soda. “Thanks,” she said.

“That viral video saved my ass, mama,” Ramon said, stretching out on a lounge chair across from her, despite the balcony being shrouded in shade. “I told Brian I couldn’t let you get on a plane to go meet some guy by yourself.” 

Ally scoffed. “Some guy…” she muttered with a playful roll of her eyes.

“Hey, you never know, baby,” Ramon insisted.

“And Brian was _okay_ with that?” she asked with disbelief. “When we clearly just, like, took off to go to a concert?”

Ramon shrugged. “I guess there’s some good in him after all.”

Ally nodded. “He did always let us go early on Fridays,” she said. Ramon tipped his soda can towards her in agreement before taking a swig. “So the video got around work, huh?” she asked.

Ramon laughed. “It was all anyone could talk about,” he said. “You’re actually _still_ all anyone can talk about.”

Ally laughed and covered her face with her hands in embarrassment. “That’s so ridiculous,” she muttered through her fingers.

“So when do I get to see a show, huh?” he asked.

“What?” Ally said, dropping her hands from her face.

“A real show,” he said. “I know you’re out there doing more than just one song now. Do I have to keep watching 30-second clips on Twitter?”

Ally’s eyes widened. His request, though simple, was something that hadn’t even occurred to her. “I…I’m not sure,” she said. “He…well, he played here the night we all met.”

“I told you I could get used to that private plane life, baby girl,” Ramon reminded her. He pulled up his sunglasses to peek at her with a mischievous grin.

“Dad would probably want to see one, too,” Ally realized. “Dad _deserves_ to see one…I’ll ask Jack. I’m sure he’ll let me use the plane to get you guys out to a show.”

“So it’s going well with him, then?” Ramon asked.

“Yeah,” Ally said with a smile. “It’s amazing.”

“And you’re not freaked out about dating _Jackson Maine_?”

“Well, not _anymore_ ,” Ally said with a laugh. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, I guess I thought you might come back looking like a fashion model or a makeup ad or something,” Ramon admitted.

“Like I have some sort of insanely gorgeous standard to live up to?” Ally asked. Ramon shrugged. “You think I didn’t Google that, like, the second after we got home from that first show?”

“What’d you find?” Ramon asked.

“Not much,” Ally said. “Rumors…a couple pictures. He was linked to a TV star at one point, but if that was even true, it didn’t seem to last long.” She looked at him knowingly and asked, “What did _you_ find?”

“Not much more than that,” Ramon admitted. “If I’d found anything good, you’d know.”

“He keeps to himself, you know? He won’t even admit _we’re_ dating, even though that’s _got_ to be kind of obvious,” Ally said.

Ramon laughed. “That reporter didn’t buy him deflecting that question at all.”

“No,” Ally agreed with a laugh. “I don’t know; he’s just really private. It’s nice.”

“You love him?” Ramon asked.

“Oh my god,” Ally replied. “I met him, like, two and a half months ago.”

“And you _live_ with him,” Ramon said. “You know, sorta.”

“Sort of,” Ally agreed with a shrug. “For now, anyway.”

“So…” Ramon prompted. “Do you?”

Ally sighed and fell into a long moment of silence. Did she love him? _Could_ she love him already? Sometimes she wondered whether her feelings for _him_ were getting muddled with her feelings about what he was doing _for_ her, but that was something she’d quickly decided she wouldn’t be able to sort out while they were on the road. She wanted to live in the moment, go with the flow of the adventure that had fallen into her lap, let the spontaneous part of her that had said “to hell with it” and walked off her job and onto his private plane take control for a while, and that didn’t leave a lot of room for analyzing the emotions that swirled around inside of her every time he looked her way or whispered something in her ear.

But whether she’d given it much thought or not, whether she was really ready to admit it or not, she knew in her heart that one look at the songs she’d been writing since she met Jack would certainly seem to point towards one very specific answer to Ramon’s question.

“Yeah,” she finally said. “Yeah, of course I do.”

Ramon grinned. “Does he know you love him?” he asked.

“I don’t think I knew until two seconds ago,” Ally admitted with a laugh. She looked down, smiled to herself, and shook her head as she said, “I’m fine with just…feeling it for a little while.” She glanced back up at Ramon again, and added, “I haven’t even seen his house yet, Jesus.”

 

Later that night, Jack found Ally standing alone in the middle of his music room, her body covered in the dark button-down shirt he’d worn to dinner, the buttons fastened only from the base of her sternum down. She was staring so intently at the Grammy resting on the bookshelf in front of her, like it was a puzzle she didn’t quite know how to begin to solve, and he couldn’t bring himself to interrupt. Dressed in only his underwear, he stopped before he entered the room and let himself quietly fall against the side of the doorframe. Jack watched as she slowly raised her fist and then held steady, contemplating her actions for a moment, before stretching her fingers out towards the award. She got halfway there, pulled her hand back and bit her lip instead, and Jack couldn’t stop the chuckle that escaped his lips.

“You can touch it,” he said, his voice startling the barefoot woman who’d found her way to his sanctuary. She gasped and, with a jump, held her formerly outstretched hand to heart instead.

“Oh my god,” she whispered. She raised her voice a bit and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Jack laughed from the doorway. “You can touch it; this isn’t a fucking museum.”

“No, I mean…I’m sorry for wandering around without you and…” Ally started.

“It’s okay,” Jack said, cutting her off.

“You only went to the bathroom, and I just…” she said.

“I’m comfortable with you being here,” Jack assured her.

Ally smiled at that and nodded softly. She glanced down at herself and said, “I couldn’t find my dress.”

“Well, you look pretty good like that,” he said. He finally took a few steps into the room and nodded towards the bookshelf. “Go on,” he prompted.

Excitement sparkled in Ally’s eyes as she turned back towards the Grammy and reached for it again. This time, she let the tip of her finger gently collide with the edge of the gramophone.

Jack chuckled again as he watched her run her finger along the gold as carefully as if the award was going to break beneath her touch. “You’re gonna have one of those one day,” he said.

Ally scoffed, her messy hair flying around her face as she turned to look at him. “Come on,” she said.

“You will,” he promised. “I mean it.”

“Yeah?” she asked. “How’s that gonna happen?”

Jack grabbed her waist from behind and slid his hands around her body, crossing them low against her stomach as he admired the way the loose sides of his shirt hugged the gentle curves of her breasts. Ally fell back against him and closed her eyes in a contented peace, her head resting in the space between his neck and his shoulder.

“Maybe I’ll just put you on my next record and we can win one together,” he suggested.

Ally grinned widely and glanced up at him. “That would be fucking awesome,” she said, causing Jack to laugh again at the instant excitement that garnered. She picked her head up and looked back to the bookshelf in front of them. “It’s not about that, though,” Ally said. “I don’t want it for awards.”

“I know,” Jack said, kissing her cheek. “But winning one sure doesn’t suck.” Ally smiled and leaned into his embrace again. “You know I really want to do that, right?” he asked.

“What?” she asked.

“Put you on my next record. I mean, at least for a song or…six,” he explained.

Jack had known that was something he wanted to do from the moment they first sang ‘Shallow’ together. Ally looked up at him like it was the first time she’d ever considered such a possibility.

“You’re not fucking with me, right?” she asked.

“No, I’m not fucking with you,” he said. “Those songs are too good to not be on a record.”

She audibly exhaled and shook her head slightly as she turned around in his arms and pushed herself onto her toes to reach his lips for a kiss.

“C’mon,” he said, letting her go as he turned towards the door. “Let’s go find your dress.”

“Okay,” Ally said with a snicker at the abrupt change of subject. “Why?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Unless you wanna go home like that,” he laughed.

The absurd notion of walking into her father’s house in nothing but Jack’s shirt drew a laugh out of Ally, too…until the implication behind his words hit her and confusion washed over her face. “Wait… _what_?” Ally asked. She moved swiftly to catch up with him just outside the door and grabbed his arm, halting his movements towards the living room. He turned around to face her, and she said, almost delicately, “I just…I guess I thought I’d stay here tonight.”

“On a first date?” Jack teased, his lips curved into a grin.

Ally’s eyes narrowed, and she dropped his arm. “Well, we just fucked on your couch on a ‘first date,’” she said bluntly, putting his words in air quotes.

“Are you mad?” he asked.

“No, I just don’t understand what’s happening right now,” she admitted. She closed her eyes as she let out a calming sigh. “You know it’s okay, right? I live with my dad, but he’s not gonna come looking for you or something if I don’t come home. Unless you just don’t want me to stay.”

“No, I’m not…I’m not trying to get rid of you or anything. I just thought about it after you wanted to go home, and as much as I fucking hate driving away from you, I know I took you away from everything to…what was that you said?”

“ _No_ ,” Ally whined, drawing the word into several syllables; she knew what he was about to say.

“Trap you in a goddamn metal tube for weeks on end?” Jack asked, echoing her earlier words on the road.

Ally groaned and covered her face with her hands. “You know I didn’t really mean that, right? You said you knew I didn’t really mean that.”

“I know,” he said, placing his hands on her shoulders. “I just don’t want to keep you from the things you miss the whole time we’re home, too.”

“That’s all this is?” Ally asked, a little skeptically.

“I don’t want you to, like…resent me or something, that’s all,” he admitted with a shrug as his eyes left her face and fell to the floor instead.

“Oh,” she sighed, her voice barely audible. That – how sensitive he could be – might’ve been the most surprising thing she’d discovered about Jackson Maine, and she knew, in this case, he was probably right. They had nothing to do, nowhere to be, and she hadn’t been home long enough to form any real plans with anyone else. If she stayed the night, she’d probably stay for the next three days. With a new understanding of where he was coming from, Ally placed her hands on his bare chest and bent her knees, moving in to position herself in his lowered line of sight. When she caught his gaze, she smiled and said, “Just take me home the long way, okay?”

 

As they neared Ally’s house, she slipped her hand from his and grabbed the small clutch resting at her side. She pulled out a round travel hairbrush and flipped the sun visor on her side of his truck down to peer into the small mirror. Jack watched out of the corner of his eye as she fussed with her hair in the dim, revolving light of the streetlights outside, smoothing out the damage his fingers had done back in his living room. When she pulled out the lip gloss that matched her red dress next, Jack chuckled and glanced at the time glowing on the dashboard.

“Is your dad even still gonna be awake?” he asked, knowing exactly why she was trying to perfect her look all over again.

“Yeah,” Ally said affirmatively. “And he might not be alone. Those guys can play poker all night.”

“Well, skip that,” he said, grabbing the gloss from her hand. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye again and said, “I’m just gonna kiss it off you when we get there.”

Accepting his explanation, she threw the gloss back into her clutch and shifted as best she could within the confines of the seatbelt to face him. “Hey,” she said. “Remember what I said about using the plane to get Dad and Ramon to a performance before the tour ends?”

“Yeah,” Jack replied.

“You can invite him if you want…make it seem like your idea,” she offered.

“Score some points with your dad?” Jack laughed. Ally nodded. “Do I need to score some points with your dad?”

“No, he likes you,” Ally promised as Jack pulled into her driveway. “But you’re sleeping with his daughter, so you know…couldn’t hurt.”

They climbed out of their respective sides of the vehicle and met in the front, wordlessly lacing their fingers together as they made their way to the front porch of the small house. When they reached the top of the steps, they turned to face each other, their fingers still entwined, and Ally felt a warmth spread across her stomach.

Jack was standing in the pale glow of the porch light, looking at her like he already missed her as his thumb stroked back and forth against the hand clasped with his, and Ally didn’t want to leave him. She didn’t want to go inside; she didn’t want him to go home without her, and she knew – that wasn’t the music or the concerts or the record feature he’d promised her that evening. She didn’t need the tour to conclude to know how she felt about him because even if none of that existed, she thought she’d still be standing right there on that porch, not wanting the night to end.

“What?” Jack finally asked after a few moments of silence.

“I’m just…wishing I’d insisted on staying the night,” Ally admitted. She pulled the hand entwined with hers up and clasped her free hand around his, too. With a slight roll of her eyes, she said, “I’m gonna stay at least _once_ during this break.”

“You better,” Jack muttered, tugging her in.

He cradled her face in both of his palms as he brought their lips together for a kiss. Ally sighed against his mouth and slipped her arms around his torso, holding him tightly against her body. Jack sucked her bottom lip between his, smoothing his tongue against it, and she opened her mouth against his, inviting him to deepen their kiss. He did, sliding one arm around her shoulders, pushing her head into the crook of his elbow as he kissed her harder.

The whimper from the back of Ally’s throat was almost – but not quite – drowned out by the click of a lock as Lorenzo opened the front door. Their kiss came to an abrupt end, and Jack dropped his arms from her body entirely as her father stepped into the yellow glow of the porch light.

“Pretty late,” Lorenzo said casually, looking at his watch.

“What was that about not comin’ to look for you?” Jack muttered in Ally’s ear.

Ally rolled her eyes and looked at her father with a pointed glare. She refused to let go of Jack, keeping one arm around his back, and Jack followed her lead, wrapping his corresponding arm around her, too.

“I didn’t get to see you yesterday,” Lorenzo said to Jack. “You taking good care of her out on the road?”

“Yeah, Dad,” Ally said, leaning into Jack’s chest. “He’s great.”

“I keep bringing her back in one piece, right?” Jack replied.

“Speaking of, you’ve got a bit of a drive back home yourself tonight, right?” Lorenzo asked. He looked at his watch again, and Ally’s glare returned, more hardened than before. “I’m just saying, it’s after midnight.”

Ally kept glaring at him, fixed in a seemingly permanent staring contest with her father, and Jack leaned down, kissing her hair to let her know it was alright. Ally sighed and looked up at him.

“We probably have a larger audience anyway,” she quietly muttered. Jack raised an eyebrow, not understanding, and Ally nodded out towards the street, where at least a few shadows stood in the windows of neighboring homes.

“Oh,” Jack said with a laugh. He looked back towards Lorenzo and said, “Hey, why don’t you come back out with us in a couple weeks?”

“What do you mean?” Lorenzo asked.

“Come back out with us, see a show…I can fly you home after, no cost,” Jack offered.

“See a show?” Lorenzo asked, his face lighting up at the idea. Despite herself, Ally found herself smiling, too. “That’s not too much trouble?”

“Nah,” Jack assured him. “No trouble at all.”

“Sweetheart, I could come watch you sing,” Lorenzo said.

“I know,” Ally said with a grin.

“Why don’t you tell Jack goodnight and come inside?” Lorenzo said, and just like that, Ally’s smile turned into a glare again. “What?” Lorenzo said. “It’s late!”

Jack tapped his fingers against her back, and Ally looked up at him again. He shrugged as if to say it was okay, and Ally reached for his face.

“Goodnight, baby,” she whispered against his lips before pressing one more kiss against his lips. She pulled away just to move right back in and steal three more before saying, finally, “Bye.”

“Bye,” Jack echoed, caressing her back as he stepped away. He shook Lorenzo’s hand and headed down the porch stairs, leaving father and daughter in a much more tense environment than he had the morning before.

Ally continued to scowl at her father, and Lorenzo pretended not to notice as he watched Jack climb into the driver’s seat of his truck, start the ignition, and back into the street behind him. He glanced at his unhappy daughter and gestured towards the look on her face.

“You know, your face could freeze like that,” he said. Ally, unamused, blinked in his direction. “Oh, what?” Lorenzo asked.

Ally threw her arms out to her sides, like she couldn’t believe he didn’t know exactly why she was irritated with him. “Like I’m still seventeen or something?” she asked defiantly. She walked past him on her way to the front door, high heels clicking loudly against the porch with each heavy step. “ _Seriously_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always welcomed! Thanks for reading :)


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